2: General operation Series 2600B System SourceMeter® Instrument
2-100 2600BS-901-01 Rev. B / May 2013
LabVIEW drivers
Native LabVIEW drivers
A native LabVIEW
TM
driver is a LabVIEW driver that is created using entirely built-in LabVIEW VIs —
it does not make any calls to external DLLs or Library files. This makes the driver portable to all the
platforms and operating systems that LabVIEW and VISA supports (currently, Linux
®
on x86, Mac
OS
®
X, and Microsoft
®
Windows
®
).
National Instruments (NI
TM
) maintains a native LabVIEW driver style guide
(http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3271).
LabVIEW driver wrappers
All IVI-C drivers have a function panel file (.fp) that shows a hierarchy of the function calls into a DLL.
It is a tool that guides a user to select the correct function call in the driver, since a DLL only has a flat
API entry point scheme (unlike COM or .NET). Any CVI-generated .fp file can be imported into
LabVIEW and LabVIEW will generate a wrapper for the DLL. The drawback here is that the driver is
dependent on the DLL, which is not portable and is therefore Windows-specific.
Obtaining instrument drivers
To see what drivers are available for your instrument:
1. Go to the Keithley Instruments support website (http://www.keithley.com/support).
2. Enter the model number of your instrument.
3. Select Software Driver from the list.
For LabVIEW
TM
, you can also go to National Instrument's website and search their instrument driver
database.
Instrument driver examples
All Keithley drivers come with examples written in several programming languages that show you how
to do the most common things with the instruments.
Install the driver. The examples are in the Microsoft
®
Windows
®
Start menu, under Keithley
Instruments > Model Number (where Model Number is the instrument model number).
IVI shared components
The IVI shared components are a similar concept to the VISA shared components. The IVI
Foundation provides class drivers for:
• All the supported instruments (DMM, Scope, Fgen, and so on)
• The configuration store
The IVI shared components also create the installation folders and registry keys that all IVI drivers
and support files use for installation.
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