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What is Measurement Studio?

Module by: Subhasree Hariharan

Summary: This section provides an overview Measurement Studio.

Measurement Studio

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

  • Native .NET instrument control and DAQ libraries, such as GPIB, VISA, and DAQmx
  • Analysis functions ranging from FFT to spectral measurements to statistics to curve fitting
  • UI controls for displaying data that is, graphs, knobs, gauges, and so on

Because Measurement Studio is designed for .NET, you can enhance your existing Visual Studio .NET code, including Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++, with the power of Measurement Studio to complete your measurement and automation applications much faster.

Figure 1
Figure 1 (graphics1.jpg)

Measurement Studio includes native support for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET 2003, and Visual Studio 6.0.

History

The tools for Visual Basic first emerged as a set of Visual Basic extension files for adding data acquisition to Visual Basic 3.0 applications. Visual Basic 4.0 allowed the opportunity to provide the first ActiveX control for Visual Basic and thus Component Works emerged.

In February 2000, National Instruments decided to combine all of its text-based programming tools, Component Works, Component Works++, and LabWindows/CVI into one package called Measurement Studio.

As Microsoft introduced new technologies and programming platforms, so did National Instruments. Measurement Studio 7.0 was the first version to support .NET. This version provided native .NET controls and classes to integrate into the Visual Studio IDE.

Measurement Studio 8.0.1 was the first version to support Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0. Measurement Studio 8.1.1 was the first version to natively support Windows Vista.

You can still use many of the Measurement Studio 6.0 controls in conjunction with the new .NET components.

Measurement Studio Hierarchy

Measurement Studio provides support for multiple versions of Visual Studio including 2005, .NET 2003, and 6.0.

In order to receive support for Visual Studio 6.0—Measurement Studio Professional Edition and higher must be purchased. If purchased, an additional CD is shipped that contains Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 6.0 (VB 6.0 and C++ 6.0).

Figure 2
Figure 2 (graphics2.jpg)

Where Measurement Studio Fits In

As mentioned earlier, Measurement Studio consists of managed .NET libraries, controls, and assistants for data acquisition, instrument control, analysis and signal processing, and user interface display. These controls, libraries, and assistants sit on top of Microsoft Visual Studio and its languages.

Visual Studio Environment Integration

Measurement Studio completely integrates with the Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005 environment. This allows you to use Visual Studio for the entire development process.

The following are the list of advantages of this integration:

  1. Instrument I/O and DAQ Assistant are fully integrated into Visual Studio that generates Visual Basic .NET, C#. NET, or C++ (MFC) code
  2. There exists a menu access to Parameter Assistant, MAX, NI Spy, IDNet, support and so on
  3. The managed .NET user interface controls are fully integrated into the Visual Studio .NET toolbox
  4. The managed .NET class libraries for DAQ, VISA, GPIB, and analysis are integrated
  5. There is property page integration for all Measurement Studio user interface controls
  6. It has an integrated help that provides getting started topics and dynamic help
Figure 3
Figure 3 (graphics3.jpg)

Integration Tools

The Measurement Studio tools integrate natively into Visual Studio .NET so you can use them exactly as you would Microsoft tools. Measurement Studio dramatically reduces application development time with project templates, wizards, and hardware API assistants.

Project templates—create projects, according to the given specifications; it contains the Measurement Studio libraries and tools that you need to be able to design the measurement application.

Add/Remove class libraries wizard—quickly adds or removes references to Measurement Studio class libraries from a project.

Hardware API assistants—NI Instrument I/O Assistant and NI DAQ Assistant interactively define reusable measurement and generation tasks and automatically generate code for the project.

Parameter Assistant—discovers and inserts valid parameter values into your code for DataSocket, DAQ, GPIB, and VISA methods.

Figure 4
Figure 4 (graphics4.jpg)

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