What tweaks are needed to get LabView 7.1 work with Agilent Intuilink

[Kelly80907]

Any help is appreciated....

We have a LabView program that was developed by a subcontractor several years ago when 7.1 first came out. The program is used to talk to Agilent test equipment and mainly pull data from the equipment such as power levels, frequencies, and trace data plus command the equipment with setup parameters and settings. In order to pull screen grabs from the Agilent equipment (an E4446A spectrum analyzer), a small agilent program "Intuilink" is called from within the program to get the screen grab and then it is dropped into Excel. It has been running on Windows 2000.

We're trying to make a new test laptop now and are trying to install the application and all the other bits and pieces to make it all work. It seems like LabView and Agilent VISA have to be installed side by side, and then there is also a "tulip.dll" file that has to be registered, but it won't register in Windows XP. the program crashes because everything isn't properly installed.

Any words of wisdom on what this "tulip.dll" is and how to register it? Also any application notes on getting LabView and Agilent to play together on the same computer?

thanks

kp

[Krista H]

Hi Kelly,

What you need to do is install NI-VISA first and then the Agilent Visa. When you install the Agilent Visa make sure that you do not set it at the primary version. NI-VISA will only function as the primary VISA and therefore only one visa32.dll can be registered at a time, rev K of the Agilent I/O libraries provides a second DLL named agvisa32.dll. Any program linked to this DLL will have access to Agilent’s VISA without requiring that Agilent VISA be primary. The same PC can run some programs with NI-VISA and other programs with Agilent VISA. PnP drivers will only work with the VISA that is primary.

If you try this and are still having issues please let me know.

[Kelly80907]

thanks for the advice. are the steps you mention with making agilent secondary and the other dll obvious when installing the programs?

do you know anything about this "tulip.dll"

kp

[Krista H]

Hi Kelly,

If the process is done correctly you should have no problem with the tulip.dll. I have attached a document that will help you with the installation. It has a step by step process that will show you each step.

[Kelly80907]

thank you. i'll give it a shot and let you know how it works out.

kp

[Kelly80907]

after following the installation sequence, we ran the program and it talked to the equipment, but at the end generated the error shown in the attached document. any ideas?

kp

[Krista H]

Hi Kelly,

I don't think that this has anything to do with your Visa session. Do you happen to be using the New Report.vi. If so then follow this link and try this.

Error using New Report.vi

If not could you explain better what you are doing so that I can help.