Measurement Studio is an integrated suite of tools and class libraries designed to help developers create measurement and automation Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Web Forms applications using Microsoft .NET technologies.
Measurement Studio 2013 includes separate, parallel sets of class libraries, integration features, and support documentation for developing with Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2010, and Visual Studio 2008. This readme documents only Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012. Measurement Studio support for other versions of Visual Studio includes separate readme files; refer to these respective readme files or the Measurement Studio Release Notes for more information about Measurement Studio support for other versions of Visual Studio.
This file contains the following sections:
For information on the new features and functionality that have been introduced in Measurement Studio since version 2012, refer to the What's New in Measurement Studio 2013 topic in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help.
The following sections list the installation requirements, installation instructions, and driver support information for Measurement Studio 2013.
Note Before you install the software, refer to the Measurement Studio 2013 Known Issues Web page for a complete, up-to-date list of known issues in Measurement Studio 2013.
To install and run Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012, your computer must have the following:
Complete the following steps to install Measurement Studio. These steps describe a typical installation. Please carefully review all additional licensing and warning dialog boxes.
National Instruments recommends that you exit all programs before running the Measurement Studio installer. Applications that run in the background, such as virus scanning utilities, might cause the installer to take longer than necessary to complete.
Tip You can use a spec file to programmatically control the Measurement Studio installer for a single distribution or for the entire suite. An example spec file for a single distribution is located on your installation media at <drive>:Distributions\Measurement Studio for VS20xx\Bin\template_spec.txt. For more information, refer to KnowledgeBase Article 4CJDP38M: Automating the Installation of a Single Installer on ni.com. Alternately, you can generate a spec file for the entire Measurement Studio suite. Refer to KnowledgeBase Article 4GGGDQH0: Automating the Installation of a Suited Installer on ni.com for instructions on how to generate a spec file for your suite. To use .NET class libraries that interface to National Instruments device drivers, you must install the underlying device drivers in addition to the .NET class libraries. You can run the underlying device driver installers from the NI Device Drivers DVD included with Measurement Studio or download the latest version of the NI Device Drivers by selecting NI Device Drivers from ni.com/drivers.
Note The DAQ Assistant is installed from the NI Device Drivers DVD. You must install the NI Device Drivers DVD to use the assistant.
To determine what drivers are supported for each version of Visual Studio, whether the driver supports 32-bit or 64-bit applications, and the location of the installer files, refer to the Driver Support section of the Measurement Studio Release Notes.
If you did not activate Measurement Studio during installation, you can use the NI Activation Wizard to activate the software after installation. To activate Measurement Studio, you need the serial number printed on the Certificate of Ownership included in your software kit. Refer to the Licensing, Evaluation, and Activation topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help for more information about how to activate Measurement Studio.
National Instruments offers a variety of Measurement Studio licenses, with certain licensed features available for each license type: Standard Edition, Professional Edition, and Enterprise Edition. Refer to the Measurement Studio Editions topic in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help for more information on Measurement Studio editions, and the Licensing Measurement Studio topic in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help for more information about licensing Measurement Studio.
Tip To move to a different Measurement Studio edition, you can activate the new edition by using NI License Manager. To access NI License Manager, select Start»All Programs»NationalInstruments»NI License Manager or, in Windows 8, select NI Launcher»NI License Manager.
For general license activation information, refer to ni.com/activate. Refer to ni.com/mstudio to purchase a Measurement Studio license. Contact a local National Instruments representative at www.ni.com/contact for more information or for questions about specific licensing needs.
Measurement Studio supports concurrent licensing as part of a volume license agreement. If your software is a part of a Volume License Agreement (VLA), contact your VLA administrator for installation and activation instructions.
You can view the NI Measurement Studio Help from within Microsoft's Help Viewer by:
You can use the Manage Content tab within the Help Viewer to uninstall or reinstall the Measurement Studio 2013 help. The help manifest files (.msha files) for the Measurement Studio 2013 help are located in the <National Instruments>\MeasurementStudioVS2012\Help directory, where <National Instruments> refers to the directory where you installed Measurement Studio.
Tip Select Set Help Preference»Launch in Help Viewer from within the Help menu in Visual Studio to view the integrated Measurement Studio help. If you have Launch in Browser selected, the Measurement Studio help does not appear.
You can have only one version of Measurement Studio installed on a system for each version of Visual Studio or the Microsoft .NET Framework installed on the system. For example, you can have Measurement Studio 2013 for Visual Studio 2010 installed on the same system as Measurement Studio 2012 for Visual Studio 2008, but you cannot have Measurement Studio 2013 for Visual Studio 2010 installed on the same system as Measurement Studio 2012 for Visual Studio 2010.
If you install a newer version of Measurement Studio on a machine that has a prior version of Measurement Studio installed, the newer version installer replaces the prior version functionality, including class libraries. However, the prior version assemblies remain in the global assembly cache (GAC); therefore, applications that reference the prior version continue to use the prior version .NET assemblies.
NoteNationalInstruments.Common.dlluses a publisher policy file to redirect applications to always use the newest version ofNationalInstruments.Common.dllinstalled on the system, for each version of the .NET Framework. However, prior versions ofNationalInstruments.Common.dllremain in the GAC after you install a newer version of Measurement Studio. National Instruments exerts extra effort to ensure thatNationalInstruments.Common.dllis backward-compatible so that applications built against prior versions of Measurement Studio continue to work as expected.
To deploy an application built with Measurement Studio .NET class libraries, the target computer must have a Windows 8/7/Vista SP2/Server 2008 (R2 edition) operating system and .NET Framework 4.5.
Visual Studio 2012 does not support Microsoft Setup Projects for deployment. You can use the following information to help you create an installer for your application in Visual Studio 2012. For more information on creating an installer with Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012, refer to the Deploying Measurement Studio Applications topic in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help. Additionally, you can use the Deployment example application for a sample project you can modify and use to deploy your project. Refer to the Where to Find Examples topic in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help to determine where example projects are installed on your machine.
ConfigurationData element in your .wxs file for that component. For information on how to use this element, refer to the Deployment example installed with Measurement Studio. NationalInstruments.Common.dll assembly, which is built against the .NET Framework version 4.0.
When you install National Instruments software on Microsoft Windows 8, you will notice a few additional tiles on the Start screen, including shortcuts to NI application software products such as NI LabVIEW, Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX), and the new NI Launcher.
NI Launcher helps you find and launch installed NI products. It provides you with a method of finding NI products similar to the Start menu in previous versions of Microsoft Windows. To use NI Launcher, click the NI Launcher tile on the Start screen. NI Launcher launches the desktop and opens a menu containing a list of NI products. Click any NI product to launch it.
Note Unlike previous versions of Microsoft Windows, MAX does not appear as a desktop shortcut. You can launch MAX either from the Start screen or from within NI Launcher.
For convenience, you can pin your most-used NI applications, such as MAX, to either the Start screen or the Taskbar on the desktop, as necessary:
| Current Application | Icon Location | Pin to Action |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 8 Desktop | Desktop Taskbar | Right-click application and select Pin to Taskbar |
| Windows 8 Desktop | Start screen | Right-click application and select Pin to Start |
| Windows 8 Start screen | Desktop Taskbar | Right-click application and select Pin to taskbar from the menu bar on the bottom of the screen |
If you want to find a particular application or related files, such as documentation files, from the Start screen, you can access all installed files by right-clicking anywhere on the Start screen and selecting All apps. A list of all installed software and related files appears, in alphabetical order by creator or type.
For more information about NI support for Windows 8, visit ni.com/windows8.
For assistance in getting started with Measurement Studio 2013, refer to the Measurement Studio Overview and the Getting Started with the Measurement Studio Class Libraries topics in the installed NI Measurement Studio Help or refer to the Measurement Studio Release Notes and Getting Started with Measurement Studio manual.
Within Visual Studio, you can launch the NI Measurement Studio Help by selecting Measurement Studio»NI Measurement Studio Help.
You can access the list of bugs fixed in Measurement Studio 2013 online. Refer to the Measurement Studio Bug Fix Information Web page for a complete listing of the bugs fixed in Measurement Studio 2013.
You can access the known issues for Measurement Studio 2013 online. Refer to the Measurement Studio 2013 Known Issues Web page for a complete, up-to-date listing of known issues in Measurement Studio 2013.
For a complete list of incompatibilities in Measurement Studio with previous versions of Measurement Studio and otherwise supported features, including a list of obsoleted members and members that have been changed to sealed override or non-virtual, refer to the Measurement Studio Incompatibilities topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help.
ToIntervalFromBase option for the GaugeDouble.CoercionMode property from both the gauge smart tag and the Property Grid. In Measurement Studio 2013, you can only select and edit this option from the Property Grid.
The Measurement Studio life cycle support policy states a commitment to support the three most recent versions of Microsoft Visual Studio. As a result, Measurement Studio 2013 does not provide feature support for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2003, Visual C++ MFC, and Visual Studio 6.0. However, legacy support is available in the following products:
To qualify to receive these products, you must meet one of the following criteria:
Refer to ni.com/mstudio/legacysupport for additional information about Measurement Studio legacy support, including installation and configuration information, or contact a Technical Sales Representative at ni.com/contact.
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