Creating the TestStand Engine

When you write an application using the TestStand API, you must create a TestStand Engine object. Because you can create the TestStand Engine as an ActiveX control or as an ActiveX Automation server, you can access the engine from any application development environment that supports ActiveX. If you use a development environment that supports ActiveX controls with events, such as Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual C/C++, create the Engine object by adding the TestStand Engine control to the main form of the application. If the development environment does not support ActiveX controls, you can create the Engine object as an in-process automation server.

Note NI recommends that you call the Engine.LoadTypePaletteFilesEx method when you create the TestStand Engine to ensure that the application loads the correct versions of step types and data types. If you do not load the type palettes and load a sequence file with older versions of NI types, the sequence file might not execute correctly.