Using NI Switch Executive in Visual C++

This topic assumes that you are using the Microsoft Visual C++ ADE to manage your code development and that you are familiar with the ADE.

Follow these steps to develop an NI Switch Executive application in Visual C++:

1. Open an existing or new Visual C++ project.
2. Create source files of type C source code (.c) or C++ source code (.cpp) and add them to the project. Make sure that you include the NI Switch Executive header file, nise.h, in your source code files as follows: #include "nise.h".
3. Specify the directory that contains the NI Switch Executive header file under the Preprocessor»Additional include directories settings in your compiler—for Visual C++ 6.0 these files are under Project»Settings»C/C++. The NI Switch Executive header files are located at <SwitchExecutive>\API\C.
4. Add the NI Switch Executive import library nise.lib to the project under Link»General»Object/Library Modules. The NI Switch Executive import library files are located in the <SwitchExecutive>\API\C directory within your NI Switch Executive directory.

   Tip  The nise.h file includes visatypes.h from NI-VISA. If the compiler is having trouble locating that file, you can add your VXIPnP include directory (e.g. "c:\vxipnp\winnt\include") to the project's list of directories to include from.

5. Add NI Switch Executive function calls to your application.
6. Build your application.

String Passing

To pass strings, pass a pointer to the first element of the character array. Be sure that the string is null-terminated.

Parameter Passing

By default, C passes parameters by value. Remember to pass pointers to variables when you need to pass by address.