Drivers - Best practice

[vtiu]

I have three computers, each with a different version of Labview installed. Office PC - Labview 2019, Remote PC - Labview 2020 and a laptop - Labview 2023. I have designed a control system on my office PC which has been copied to the remote PC, which controls a small pilot plant. I can login to this remote PC and make small changes as required. Upgrading all to Labview 2023 is not possible due to license restrictions.

My problem is as follows: The plant requires two driver systems. One from Bronkhorst (67 Files) and one from Lauda (113 files). They are installed on all three PC's in the directory "instr.lib", a sub directory of the Labview version. After designing my project on the 2019 version, I copy the files to the remote PC but it does not find the drivers as they are not in the 2019 subdirectory but in the 2020. I have to point Labview to the right place in order to load the various VI's and then re-save the project.

What would be the best solution?

1. Make a shortcut to the libraries and place it in the relevant directory. The remote PC has a Labview 2019 directory. I would create the instr.lib driectory and put the shortcut here to point to the 2020 instr.lib. I don't know if this would even work.

2. After watching a few tutorials, they said the project tree should mirror the hard disk tree so I could put the drivers directly into my project. This would make my project bigger but would be acceptable.

3. Lump it and just show Labview where the drivers are after each new change, as I do at the moment.

Thanks for any help.

Mark

[GerdW]

Hi vtiu,

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@vtiu wrote:

What would be the best solution?

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Instead of copying files from remote computers to your development laptop you should install the needed drivers using their installation routine! Most drivers come with such a routine…

• You should use a SCC system to handle distributed development with several computers!
• I recommend to use the very same LabVIEW version on all computers to simplify development… ( I did development using 3 different LabVIEW versions in parallel and it was quite challenging even though I tried to follow strict rules.)

[vtiu]

@GerdW: Thank you for your prompt reply.

"Instead of copying files from remote computers to your development laptop you should install the needed drivers using their installation routine! Most drivers come with such a routine…"

The drivers are not copied, they have been installed using the installation routine (setup.exe) on each PC. They automatically install to the local Labview version. I do not remember if the default directory can be changed.

" recommend to use the very same LabVIEW version on all computers to simplify development"

This would be the best but as I said, it is not possible due to the University license restrictions. You are right about challenging!

I am not familiar with SCC. Will have to look into this.

Best Regards.

Mark