Instruct a computer to open a vi using the version of software it was developed

[L_V_Developer]

I am working on an operator interface that spans years of software versions for Labview and Teststand. Specifically I will be using code developed in Labview 7.0, 7.1, 8.0 and 8.2. , and Teststand versions 3.1 and 3.5.  I will also be using different NIMAX configurations for each test.

Is there any way to instruct the computer to open a vi using a specific version of labview, Teststand and a specific NIMAX configuration file?

I have a feeling this operator interface is going to have to be developed using visual basic with an excel spreadsheet as the database.

[Now_With_Underscores]

Hey LV D,

By default, the last version of LabVIEW opened on your machine is the version of LabVIEW that VIs will open with, but this can be changed.  Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to associate each myfile.vi with its original creator, as Windows associates file extensions with a particular .exe based on a registry key property.  One way to open VIs in their created version of LabVIEW would be to modify the registry extension to include .70vi, .71vi, .80vi, .82vi and then associate each version of LabVIEW with the new filetype (for example, .70vi to LabVIEW 7.0).  Then all we would need to do would be to programatically determine which version of LabVIEW a VI was created in, then modify the filename programatically to .70vi, .71vi, etc, and then open the VI.  Once the VI is done running, we would probably want to programatically change the extension back to its previous '.vi' value.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Since 8.2 will open and run the VIs written with the older versions, I'm not sure why you care. What I do with my TestStand code is make each VI into a custom step and dll. The appropriate runtime engine will then be used.

The creation of custom operator interfaces is part of TestStand. Are you proposing using VB to do this?