Software components for applications and instrument drivers
The majority of software applications and all instrument drivers from Keithley Instruments depend on
the following software components:
• NI-VISA
• VISA shared components
• IVI shared components
• NI CVI runtime engine
• NI IVI compliance package
• Keithley instrument driver
These software components are available for download from the Product Support and Downloads
web page (tek.com/product-support).
Instrument driver types
There are several different styles of instrument drivers. Keithley Instruments provides the following
instrument drivers for the 2600B:
• A native LabVIEW driver
• An IVI-C driver
• An IVI-COM driver
You need to pick the style that best suits the application development environment (ADE) that you are
using. For example, if you are using LabVIEW, pick a native LabVIEW driver. If a native LabVIEW
driver is not available, you can use an IVI-C driver because LabVIEW has the option of creating a
wrapper for the IVI-C driver.
LabVIEW supports IVI-COM drivers, but they are not preferred. However, if they are the only driver
types available for the instrument, they can be used.
If LabWindows/CVI or C/C++ is your programming language, an IVI-C driver is the best option. For
Microsoft
®
Visual Basic
®
6.0 and any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, and so on), an IVI-COM driver is
the best option.
Sometimes instrument vendors do not provide all three driver types. Most languages can
accommodate other driver types, but this is not optimal.
The following sections describe the different driver types in more detail.
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