Running Labview vi in Teststand.

[sphat]

I currently have two teststands; one for development and the other for deploying. I would like to export the Amplitude and Level Measurement Vi to run on the deployment system as a Run-Time Vi.  

The development system has Laview 2009 Professional and Teststand 4.2 and deployment system has Labview 2009 Base and Teststand 4.2 installed.

I experimented with the Application Builder to see which would be the best approach but ran into problems with each build.

Application EXE

I’m having trouble passing the waveform variables. In what order do I pass the Argument Expression? How do I retrieve the output?

Shared Library DLL

When using the shared DLL, the parameters do not automatically populate. Teststand gives me a pop-up “This function either does not have parameters information in the DLL or uses types not recognized by TestStand. Am I missing something when doing the build?

Source Distribution

I get in an error saying that the Labview Vi is broken or the sub-vis is missing. Is it possible to build a source distribution and execute it as a run-time in Teststand? 

Using the Source Distribution Vi would be the easist; is there a work around to fix this?

[~jiggawax~]

Why aren't you using the TestStand deployment utility for this?  That would be the best way to go.

Also, on the deployment machine you want to change your LabVIEW adapter to use the run-time engine.

Regards,

[sphat]

Hi Jigg,

I'm new to Teststand. I haven't experimented with the Depolyment settings, I found it easier to copy and paste the directory and file to the delopment machine.

What's the difference between configuring the Labview Adaptor to Run-Time Engine and selecting the Labview Advance Settings to Always Run VI in Labview Run-Time Engine?

Thanks,

SPhat

[~jiggawax~ · Accepted solution]

The difference is that one is a global setting and one is specific to the LabVIEW step for which you set it.  Typically you develop with the Development Environment so that you can use the edit VI and debug capabilities.  Then when you deploy on the deployment machine you use the global setting for the adapter.

A source distribution may work but then you need to make sure that your search directories on the deployment machine can find all VIs and subVIs. 

The advantage of using the deployment utility is that you can have 1 package and installer.  Then you don't have to make sure that you copied everything correctly.  Some of our automations have upwards of 500 VIs.  I can't imagine trying to copy them all over.  We have well over 200 automations.  This would make for a painful experience.  Using the Deployment Utility in TestStand just makes life a lot easier for us.

A straight copy won't work because the VIs need to be relinked to the new directories.  Unless you kept the hierarchy exactly the same on both machines.  ugh... that would be painful my friend.

Hope this helps,