While in the development environment it is easy to get a reference to a Fieldpoint IO channel - just drag and drop it from the target in the project file. Things are much more cumbersome if you need to create such a refnum dynamically. (If you are making software that should be possible to just copy onto different controllers (without involving LabVIEW) and then configure to match the available/required IO, static refnums are not usable. )
To dynamically get access to an IO point in a built general purpose application you currently have to save and download an iak file to the controller from Measurement and Automation Studio and then open that iak file in your code (Using FP Open) to get the server reference you need as an input to the FP CreateTag function. The need for FP Open and the iak file to create a server refnum is the main problem.
If FP Create Tag could do its job without any iak-file (e.g. just with the IP of the controller as an additional input)...OR even better - if there was a Create Fieldpoint IO Refnum VI avilable (no such today!?) that took the controller IP (use local if not wired), device name (or ID number) and channel name (or ID number)..then things would be much more flexible and intuitive.
There is one function that allows you to address channels just by the use of slot and channel numbers - and that is the Input Range function (which should not be called the input range either by the way as it could be an output...), so another good solution would be to offer that same functionality for the IO read and write functions.
