open/convert LabView7 VI or Lib in/to Labview 9

[odessy27]

Hi, I skimmed through many posts related to backwards compatibility, but I did not find a clear solution/answer.

I have LabView2009 installed in on a vista (and one windows 7) machine. I am trying to hook up a spectrometer and control it with labview VI. The manufacturers have the LabView VIs (a library of VIs) written in LV7 (attached). When I tried to open it didn't open and gave me 2 errors, 1. The llb file was saved using different version of windows  and 2. Labview9 does not support LV6 since there is no block diagram. So more specific question is, is there any way around this? Can I open and run or can I at least open and then modify the VI and then save it in current version to make it work?

      A more general question would be, there are lots of Lab view VIs out there which are written in older versions, are newer versions of labview REALLY backward compatible? If not then, is there any way around to open and work on older version VIs other than purchasing the older version of LV?

[smercurio_fc]

This question comes up a lot in this forum.

An older version of a VI cannot be opened in a newer version if the VI was saved with no block diagram. That's because the VI must be recompiled in the new version, and you can't do that without a block diagram. There is NO WAY around this. That library was saved with a mixture of custom VIs (which were saved without a block diagram) and standard LabVIEW VIs. You should check with the manufacturer to see if they have a version for the newer version of LabVIEW. 

As to the backwards compatibility, a VI saved in a newer version of LabVIEW cannot be directly opened with an older version of LabVIEW. You can perform a "save for previous version" operation in the newer version of LabVIEW to backsave it to an earlier version. However, that only goes back one major release. 

[Dennis_Knutson · Accepted solution]

Not sure where you looked since as far as I know, every time this question is asked, the answer is always the same. There is no way to load an old VI into a newer version of LabVIEW if there is no block diagram. There is no way to modify any VI without the block diagram. The manufacturer and creator of the VI were clueless when it was written. Removing the block diagram is stupid. If they wished to protect the code, then it should have been password protected. Then it could have been loaded into newer versions. You still wouldn't be able to edit it, though. You will have to contact the vendor to get a version that will work with 2009 or start from scratch and write the code yourself.

For older VIs that still have the block diagrams, you can load anything from 6.0 or newer. See this.

[odessy27]

Thank you guys! I really appreciate your response. It totally answers my question.