I am developing a project in which I need to call a particular VI from calling VI. I have done it in development. Next, I have created an application for a calling VI. It calls a required VI from where I have saved it and works fine. My doubt is Do I need to keep that called vi as a vi even if I distribute an application to my customer? Hope I have told my doubt correctly.

@dhans wrote: Thanks for the reply. I have understood the concept between static VI reference and dynamic VI reference ostensibly. Can someone tell me the concept of these two type reference in depth? You can call a VI statically (just use it as a subVI) or by reference (dynamically). The static VI reference obtains a reference, but the call is still dynamic (you could switch the references, so the call is not fixed at compile time). So you can: + Do a normal VI call + Call the VI by reference (dynamically) + with a static VI reference + by getting a reference by name\path There are other ways to get VI references, but for a "normal" (not scripting) application those are mostly irrelevant. Dynamically calling a VI with a static VI reference has benefits (over getting a reference by name\path). For instance, you can use find all instances and the VI will be in the executable. Getting reference by name\path simply means you're on your own regarding the VI as a resource. It (and it's dependencies) will not be taken into account for anything... There are still use cases for this, for instance plug-in structures where names are not known (extendable) during compile time. Or when a name is given from e.g. a configuration file.

LabVIEW

Calling a vi from exe

Solved!

@Mctester wrote:

Very interesting explanation. Thank you!

I am trying to call a VI dinamically ( building the main path and VI name in runtime )

but this vi does not exist yet. For that reason I can not called as static reference. I can neither include the VI in the project due to deploy in specific path. This VI will be created in the future by the end user in an specific folder with my application.exe already compiled.

Is it posible to create an application for this purpose? How can I do it?

Sure.

You need to distribute the VI so the exe can find it (by it's path).

However, everything in the VI needs to be available to the exe, and it all needs to be compiled. So, the VI and all it's subVIs need to have separate compiled code off. SubVIs that are used in the exe (unless they're inlined) can be used though.

This get's messy fast. There are plenty vilib VI's that aren't available in the runtime. So the plugin VI might not seem to use any subVIs, it won't work unless you provide these resources (like picture control VIs).

The standard today is to put the VI in a packed library (ppl). This ensures everything is packed.

The bitness of the ppl needs to match (the exe can't recompile code). The LV version needs to be compatible, so the ppl needs to be make in LV14 or higher, but the same or older as the exe's version.

If the VI doesn't use any subVIs (or subVIs that are in the exe) I suppose you the exe will run it (iff the VI contains compiled code w/ correct bitness and LV version).