VISA and GPIB Application Development Using C# or VB.NET

Primary Software: Driver Software>>NI-VXI/VISA
Primary Software Version: 3.2
Primary Software Fixed Version: 3.2
Secondary Software: Driver Software>>NI-488.2
Hardware: GPIB

Problem:
I am trying to develop a VISA or GPIB application using one of the .NET languages (C# or VB.NET). How can I go about doing this?

Solution:
National Instruments provides native .NET interfaces with the NI-488.2 and NI-VISA drivers for use in C# and VB.NET. The driver software also includes documentation and shipping examples for using VISA and GPIB in C# and VB.NET.

These features are installed by the respective hardware driver installer. Make sure to enable support for this by checking the option in the driver installer feature tree. See the screenshots below for the feature tree options for the VISA and GPIB driver installers.

Documentation:
The installer will also install documentation for the 488.2 and VISA .NET class libraries into the MSDN help collection. You access the NI-488.2 and NI-VISA .NET API function reference through the Help menu in Visual Studio .NET in the same manner that you access .NET framework class library help.

Adding References:
To use the GPIB ro VISA API in a .NET project, you must first add the appropriate reference to the project. To add a reference to a project, simply select the project in the Solution Explorer and click Project»Add Reference... The refereces for the GPIB and VISA APIs are:

488.2 (GPIB) API Reference: National Instruments 488.2
VISA API Referece: National Instruments VisaNS

Shipping Examples:
For the location of the shipping examples, please refer to the following KnowledgeBase Article:
KnowledgeBase 47CCSQ5B: NI-DAQmx, NI-VISA and NI-488.2 .NET Example Locations

488.2.png

VISA.png

[attachment "visa1.gif" deleted by Jessica Stape/AUS/NIC] [attachment "visa2.gif" deleted by Jessica Stape/AUS/NIC]

Report Date: 08/18/2004
Last Updated: 08/31/2008
Document ID: 3CHC5G5B

Your Feedback!

Poor | Excellent

Yes

Document Quality?

Answered Your Question?

Please Contact NI for all product and support inquiries.