Hello Matt
I'm sorry to hear you've been having alot of trouble moving from 6.0 to the newer version of CVI. I just wanted to clarify a couple of things
1- CVI 7.1 is NOT a patched version of CVI 7.0. There was a year's delay between 7.0 and 7.1 and there were improvements made in 7.1, which is why its a minor version higher. The minor version update occured because of the fact that it was released only a year after CVI 7.0, which was the last major upgrade. The 7.1.1 patch was released because we felt that there were certain issues that needed to be corrected and made available to everyone. It does not look like you have been affected by any of those issues. Not everyone requires the 7.1.1 patch. We increment the major version of CVI if there has been 2 years or more since the last CVI major release. So the last major release of CVI was 7.0. So we certainly dont increment minor versions to indicate a patched version. If its a patch, it clearly states that.
2- The Table control was added in CVI 5.5. The Tree control is new to 7.0. These are native CVI controls and do NOT have a dependency on the LabVIEW Runtime. The dll you mention, cvi_lvrt.dll, is a version of the CVI runtime that you would link against if you are creating a CVI DLL for use with LabVIEW Real time. Your application gets linked with this dll if you specify LabVIEW Realtime only as runtime support in the target settings. For desktop applications, the target setting defaults to Full Runtime Engine.
Here is the help reference for this dll:
If you select LabVIEW Real-Time Only, your project does not link to the entire set of LabWindows/CVI libraries but instead links to a smaller set of functions. DLLs for LabVIEW Real-Time Only use cvi_lvrt.dll instead of cvirte.dll or instrsup.dll.Now we do install the LabVIEW runtime on CVI development machines, but this because of the example finder. You do NOT need to distribute the LabVIEW runtime with your CVI applications. The only application that needs this is the CVI Example finder that is installed with the CVI IDE. All the table and tree controls need is the CVI RTE. If this was communicated incorrectly to you somehow, I apologize for that.
3- None of the issues you mentioned had to do with a buggy compiler. It might occur because there might have been behavioral changes in the runtime engine. I understand you are having issues with your ActiveX control and hopefully we can help you resolve that issue soon. We do test out our ActiveX container with most commonly used out there, but it is impossible for us to be able to check it with every single activex control that exists.
4- We never claimed to support opening UIRs created in newer versions of CVI with older CVI IDEs. For example, you could create a panel is CVI 7.0 and add a tree control. CVI 6.0 will not be able to understand that control correctly because this control did not exist in that version. You should be able to open a CVI 6.0 panel in 7.x without problem. Loading a panel is different that opening a UIR for editing purposes. You should be able to run a CVI 6.0 exe using the 7.1 RTE. Im not sure why you are seeing kind of behavior with that particular activex controls, but please continue to work with us so we can resolve this.
5- The issue with mesa was found recently where we were not including the mesa.dll as part of the downloadable CVI runtime engine. This dll gets distributed as part of the distribution kit if you were to create a kit using the "Create Distribution Kit" option. The newest CVI RTE download should have this dll included now. You can download the new updated CVI RTE for 7.1 from
here. And ofcourse, you don't need this if you are already distributing the RTE using the CDK option.
I hope this clarifies things. If you do find issues that make upgrading challenging, please work with us so we can get you up and running.
Bilal Durrani
NI