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Multiple Version of NI Vision Development Module

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Hello,

 

We recently upgrade from LV2015 SP1 to LV2020 SP1 at our company. We also upgrade NI Vision Development Module to the 2020 SP1 version.

 

We do not plan to upgrade our old project to the 2020 version. While trying to work on one of those I had some Vision VIs missing when opening the project. I saw that those do not exist anymore in the 2020 version of VDM.

 

My questions is: is it possible to run two different versions of VDM on the same computer ?

If not, how can I still access those removed VIs ?

 

Thank you for your answer.

Thibault

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Hi Thibault,

 

1. To my knowledge, it is not possible to have different versions of NI VDM in the same machine.(with Virtual Machine, Yes!)

2. I have not faced any missing VIs when I did my upgrades, What are the VIs that are missing?

 

I have done such VDM upgrades ( from '14 to '17 and '17 to '19)

 

-Rahul

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The Vision Development Module and many other LabVIEW Toolkits only come with support for the current LabVIEW version AND the three prior LabVIEW versions. In addition to installing the Vision Development Module VIs to these 4 LabVIEW versions if they are present on the machine, it actively removes the VIs from all older LabVIEW versions that may also be installed on the machine.

 

Why? The Vision Development Module VIs are interfaces to the NI Vision Development kernel library which is in the form of several DLLs. Only one version of DLLs can be installed on the same machine at the same time. Sometimes it is necessary to make binary incompatible changes to the DLL interface when adding new features. While that doesn't happen that often it can occur. In that case, NI also has to make changes to the VIs that call into these DLLs. NI then packs an installer for these VIs into the installer for the current LabVIEW version and the prior three LabVIEW versions AND tests that this all actually works in each of these versions by running unit tests and what else. If they would have to go back and provide support for even older versions, they would have to build installer components for each of these versions and (which is the even more laborious task) also test each of them on several machines. This gets at some point so prohibitive that there needs to be a point where one needs to say: Enough is enough!

 

While I have in the past avoided that removal of such toolkits from older versions by renaming the according LabVIEW folders temporarily, it's definitely not something you should do for production work environments. In my case it was to be able to load old programs created in older LabVIEW versions to look at the code, not to build applications. While it may work sometimes, there is always a chance that your application uses a specific VI that calls into a binary incompatible DLL functions and the result is anything in between a hard crash right away, to a delayed crash later on at a seemingly totally unrelated moment, to memory corruptions that alter your measurement data in very or often rather not obvious ways.

Also I can attest that such old LabVIEW versions tend to get unstable over time to the point that they simply crash when you try to start them. Definitely NOT worth the trouble if you depend on creating applications in that old version, and the solution is to use clear isolation through virtual machines.

 

What you seem to have found is that some VIs are missing in VDM 2020 that were present in VDM 2015. This is highly uncommon and it would be interesting to know which VIs that are. They could be rather an additional library you installed at some point. NI very seldom removes VIs from new versions of a Toolkit, even if they may not be in the palette anymore, because they were replaced with new improved functionality.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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@rolfk wrote:

What you seem to have found is that some VIs are missing in VDM 2020 that were present in VDM 2015. This is highly uncommon and it would be interesting to know which VIs that are. They could be rather an additional library you installed at some point. NI very seldom removes VIs from new versions of a Toolkit, even if they may not be in the palette anymore, because they were replaced with new improved functionality.


I'm guessing that they finally removed the AVI1 Libraries.  I tried to test this on my LabVIEW 2020 VM, only to find I forgot to install LabVIEW Vision there.  I'm presently trying to fix this by updating to LabVIEW 2020 SP1, but (of course) the first time I tried, it Errored Out, but now it seems to be going along (slowly, very slowly).  I should be able to give a better answer in a few hours (if nothing crashes) ...

 

Bob Schor

 

P.S. -- actually, just updating LabVIEW by itself, no Drivers, no Additional Items, failed 3 times, finally finishing on the fourth pass.  I'm about to activate, reboot, and start adding packages, then Device Drivers -- it's going to be a long morning, I fear ...

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Two posts ago, @rolfk suggested some unknown Vision modules present in LabVIEW 2015 were missing in LabVIEW 2020.  I replied "I'm guessing its the AVI1 functions", but realized I hadn't installed the Vision Module for LabVIEW 2020.  Well, just upgrading LabVIEW 2020 to 2020 SP1 and adding Vision took 4 hours (!), and proved me wrong -- the AVI1 functions at least appear in vi.lib.  Oh, well, I'm not a good guesser ...

 

Bob Schor

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Hello,

 

Thank you for your answer!

 

I got the point that NI cannot go more than prior three LabVIEW versions because it demands a lot of effort to do this. I totally understand and agree with it.

 

I found that the VIs that were missing in my project are "IMAQ Quantify 2" ; "IMAQ Extract 2" ; "IMAQ Cast Image" ; "IMAQ Subtract" ; "IMAQ Divide". Can't find them in the palette nor while using the shortcut "ctrl + space".

 

Maybe I wrongly installed of NI Vision DM 2020SP1 wrong? I will try to maybe reinstall it.

 

Thibault

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Solution
Accepted by topic author thleseur

Could it be that you installed the wrong package? There is an NI Vision Acquisition Software (VAS) that contains the NI-IMAQdx driver and some of the NI-IMAQ VIs needed to display the acquired VIs in an IMAQ control.

And then you have the NI Vision Development Module (VDM) with all the Vision analysis functions, which the VIs you mention seem to be from, and is the full NI-IMAQ Toolkit but without the NI-IMAQdx VIs to access vision acquisition devices.

 

The NI-VDM requires a development license and both require a runtime license when you build applications to distribute to another computer.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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It was totally that, I indeed forgot to install NI Vision Acquisition Software while migrating to the 2020 version!

 

It works fine now, thank you very much!

 

Thibault

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Thanks for confirming. But I think you mixed up the names. The VIs you mentioned missing are part of the Vision Development Module and not the Vision Acquisition Software. But I do also find the similar names a bit an unfortunate choice by NI. 😀

The fact that the Vision Acquisition Software also installs some of the VIs that are part of the Vision Development Module, doesn't really help either.

Rolf Kalbermatter
My Blog
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