Measurement Studio 8.1.2 for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Readme

Measurement Studio is an integrated suite of tools and class libraries that are designed for developers using .NET and MFC to develop measurement and automation applications.

Measurement Studio 8.1.2 includes separate, parallel sets of class libraries, integration features, and support documentation for developing with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005.

Measurement Studio 8.1.2 includes support for Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Visual C#, and Microsoft Visual C++ in Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. Measurement Studio 8.1.2 also includes support for Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual C++ in Visual Studio 6.0. Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 is on one CD. Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 6.0 is on another CD.

This readme documents Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio .NET 2003. Refer to the readme on the Measurement Studio Support for Visual Studio 6.0 CD for information about Visual Studio 6.0 support. You can install support for both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and support for Visual Studio 6.0 on the same machine. However, you must install the support to separate directories.

This file contains the following sections:

What's New in Measurement Studio 8.1.2

This section describes new features that have been introduced in Measurement Studio since version 8.1.1.

Legend Control Scrollbars

You can use the Measurement Studio legend control scrollbar to scroll through the legend items at run time instead of having a fixed size for the control. This enables you to conserve valuable space in your application while still representing all the items necessary for a useful legend.

For more information, refer to Using the Measurement Studio Windows Forms Legend .NET Control or Using the Measurement Studio Web Forms Legend .NET Control in the NI Measurement Studio Help.

WYSIWYG Editing of Labels with Engineering Formatting in Measurement Studio User Interface Controls

Prior versions of Measurement Studio only support editing engineering formatted values at run time as basic numeric formatted strings. In Measurement Studio 8.1.2, you can edit engineering formatted values at run time as engineering formatted strings or as basic numeric formatted strings. Engineering formatted values are numeric values formatted with engineering notation and International System of Units (SI) prefixes and symbols. You can edit engineering formatted values for the Windows Forms and Web Forms numeric edit control and the Windows Forms numeric edit array control. You can edit engineering formatted range for the Windows Forms numeric pointer controls and the Windows Forms and Web Forms scatter, waveform, and complex graph axes.

This feature is enabled by default for new Measurement Studio controls you add to your project. You can enable this feature for existing Measurement Studio controls in your project by checking the WYSIWYG Editing check box in the Numeric Format Mode Editor dialog box. You access the Numeric Format Mode Editor dialog box for the numeric edit control and the numeric edit array control by selecting the FormatMode property on the Property Pages for the control. You access the Numeric Format Mode Editor dialog box for the numeric pointer controls and the axes of the graph controls by selecting the EditRangeNumericFormatMode property in the Property Pages for the control.

Programmatic Parsing of Strings with Engineering Formatting

You can use the NationalInstruments.EngineeringFormatInfo.TryParse method or the NationalInstruments.EngineeringFormatInfo.Parse method to convert the engineering string representation of a number to its double-precision floating-point number equivalent based on the format you specify. You use TryParse or Parse to parse an engineering string representation of a value, such as a formatted string returned by NationalInstruments.EngineeringFormatInfo.Format, to obtain the actual value.

Updated Visual Studio 6.0 Support

Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 6.0 will now require you to run only one installer instead of an initial installation and an updater installer. Measurement Studio's Visual Studio 6.0 support also includes support for Microsoft Windows Vista.

As you work with Measurement Studio Support for Visual Studio 6.0, you might need to consult additional resources. For detailed Measurement Studio help, including function reference and in-depth documentation on developing with Measurement Studio, refer to the Measurement Studio Reference and Measurement Studio Reference Addendum. For a list of all Measurement Studio documentation in electronic format, refer to the Measurement Studio Library. To view the Measurement Studio Reference, Reference Addendum, and Library, select Start»All Programs»National Instruments»Measurement Studio Support for Visual Studio 6»Help. Refer to Measurement Studio for Visual Basic Support and Measurement Studio for Visual C++ Support on ni.com for additional information.

Analysis Code Snippets

Measurement Studio 8.1.2 includes analysis code snippets in the documentation that can be copied and pasted into an application and used immediately. The following classes include new example code snippets:

For more information, refer to Using the Measurement Studio Analysis .NET Library topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help.

For more information about what's new in Measurement Studio 8.1.2, refer to the What's New in Measurement Studio section of the NI Measurement Studio Help.

Installing Measurement Studio 8.1.2

The following sections list the system requirements for Measurement Studio 8.1.2 and instructions on how to install Measurement Studio 8.1.2.

Note    Review the installer known issues before you install Measurement Studio 8.1.2.

Installation Requirements

To use Measurement Studio, your computer must have the following:

Installation Instructions

Complete the following steps to install Measurement Studio. These steps describe a typical installation. Please carefully review all additional licensing and warning dialog boxes.

National Instruments recommends that you exit all programs before running the Measurement Studio installer. Applications that run in the background, such as virus scanning utilities, might cause the installer to take longer than average to complete.

Complete the following steps to install Measurement Studio:

  1. Log on as an administrator or as a user with administrator privileges.
  2. Insert the Measurement Studio 8.1.2 installation CD and follow the instructions that appear on the screen.

National Instruments recommends that you install the complete Measurement Studio program. If you perform a custom installation and do not install all the Measurement Studio features, you can run the installation program again later to install additional features.

Note    The option to browse for an installation location is valid only if you have not already installed any Measurement Studio features for the version of Visual Studio or the .NET Framework that you are installing. If you have any Measurement Studio features installed, then Measurement Studio installs to the same root directory to which you installed other Measurement Studio features.

Installing the Current Version of Measurement Studio over Previous Versions of Measurement Studio

You can have only one version of Measurement Studio installed on a system for each version of Visual Studio or the .NET Framework installed on the system. For example, you can have Measurement Studio 8.1.1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003 installed on the same system as Measurement Studio 8.1.2 for Visual Studio 2005, but you cannot have Measurement Studio 8.1.1 for Visual Studio 2005 installed on the same system as Measurement Studio 8.1.2 for Visual Studio 2005.

If you install a newer version of Measurement Studio on a machine that has a prior version of Measurement Studio installed, the newer version installer replaces the prior version functionality, including class libraries. However, the prior version assemblies remain in the global assembly cache (GAC); therefore, applications that reference the prior version continue to use the prior version .NET assemblies.

Note    This does not apply to NationalInstruments.Common.dll. NationalInstruments.Common.dll uses a publisher policy file to redirect applications to always use the newest version of NationalInstruments.Common.dll installed on the system, for each version of the .NET Framework. NationalInstruments.Common.dll is backward-compatible.

The default directory for Measurement Studio 8.1 support for Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Program Files\NationalInstruments\MeasurementStudioVS2003) is different than the default directory for Measurement Studio 7.0 support for Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Program Files\NationalInstruments\MeasurementStudio70). If Measurement Studio 7.0 is installed on your machine when you install Measurement Studio 8.1, Measurement Studio 8.1 installs to the 7.0 directory. If you prefer to install Measurement Studio 8.1 to the default 8.1 directory, you must first uninstall all Measurement Studio class libraries, including class libraries installed with National Instruments driver software, such as NI-VISA, NI-488.2, and NI-DAQmx.

Getting Started with Measurement Studio 8.1.2

For assistance in getting started with Measurement Studio 8.1.2, refer to the Measurement Studio Overview and the Getting Started with the Measurement Studio Class Libraries topics in the NI Measurement Studio Help or refer to the Measurement Studio User Manual and the Measurement Studio Release Notes. You can launch the NI Measurement Studio Help in the following ways:

To view the Measurement Studio User Manual and the Measurement Studio Release Notes, select Start»All Programs»National Instruments»<Measurement Studio>Measurement Studio User Manual or Start»All Programs»National Instruments»<Measurement Studio>Measurement Studio Release Notes. To view these documents, you need the free Adobe Reader. Refer to the Adobe Systems Incorporated Web site at www.adobe.com to download Adobe Reader.

To get started creating a Measurement Studio project using class library and application templates, open Visual Studio and select File»New»Project to launch the New Project dialog box. In the Project Types pane, expand the Measurement Studio Projects folder and select the Projects folder for the language you want to create the program in. Then, in the Templates pane, select the type of project you want to create.

For step-by-step guides in learning how to develop applications with Measurement Studio, refer to the Measurement Studio Walkthroughs section of the NI Measurement Studio Help.

Deploying Applications Built with Measurement Studio 8.1.2

For information about deploying applications built with Measurement Studio 8.1.2, refer to Deploying Measurement Studio Applications in the NI Measurement Studio Help.

Note    Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio .NET 2003 does not support redistributing applications to Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0.

Bug Fixes in Measurement Studio 8.1.2

The following items are bugs fixed in Measurement Studio 8.1.2.

Component Bug ID Fixed Issue
.NET Class Libraries 4ACDFQ3Q Fixed an issue where the WaveformPlot Clone destination array did not contain a sufficient number of data points.
44AC6S00 Fixed an issue where Measurement Studio Windows Forms .NET controls leaked memory.
49HH773Q Fixed an issue where the scatter graph plot line appears to overshoot actual data value for line widths greater than 1.
4CC9SFOF Fixed an issue where the axes grid lines appear after explicitly setting the grid lines visible property to False.
4AR9S9OF Fixed an issue where plotting large data sets with the scatter graph control results in inconsistent performance.
4BTHD6VQ Fixed an issue where EngineeringFormatModeEditor does not work when multiple numeric edit controls are selected.
4A0F3BHW Fixed an issue where printing a control that uses a 3D style results in low-quality output.
4CME2ARQ Fixed an issue where the first item in the Format String editor in the Numeric Format Mode editor cannot be selected directly.
4CN9OD3Q Fixed an issue where the PropertyEditor two-way binding fails during design time.
C++ Class Libraries 4CN6TVBU Fixed an issue where creating annotations programmatically takes a long time.

Known Issues in Measurement Studio

Measurement Studio 8.1.2 Incompatibilities with Previous Versions of Measurement Studio

For a complete list of incompatibilities in Measurement Studio with previous versions of Measurement Studio and otherwise supported features, including a list of obsoleted members and members that have been changed to sealed override or non-virtual, refer to the Measurement Studio Incompatibilities topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help.

Installer Known Issues

Uninstaller Known Issues

Deploying Measurement Studio Applications

Visual Studio Environment Integration Features Known Issues

.NET Class Libraries Known Issues

Visual C++ Class Libraries Known Issues

Documentation Known Issues

Copyright

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