Measurement Studio 2013 for Visual Studio 2012 Readme

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.



Installing Measurement Studio 2013

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.

Installation Requirements

To install and run Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012, your computer must have the following:


  • Microsoft operating system:
    • Windows 8 (32-bit or 64-bit)
    • Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit), including Starter Edition (32-bit)
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Framework 4.5
  • Visual Studio 2012:
    • Ultimate Edition
    • Premium Edition
    • Professional Edition
    • Express for Web
    • Express for Windows Desktop
  • 1.6 GHz or faster processor
  • DirectX 9-capable video card running at 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution display
  • 1 GB (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit) RAM
  • 1.2 GB of free hard disk space
  • Microsoft-compatible mouse
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

Installation Notes

  • Measurement Studio does not support:
    • Non-R2 editions of Windows Server
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions do not support Measurement Studio Visual Studio-integrated tools.
  • This version of Measurement Studio supports, and was tested with, the latest Visual Studio service pack and the latest operating system service pack that was available at the time this version of Measurement Studio was released. National Instruments strongly recommends using Measurement Studio with the latest Visual Studio service pack and the latest operating system service pack.
  • If you want to upgrade your operating system from one major version to another, National Instruments recommends first uninstalling all National Instruments software, including application software and drivers. This is typically not necessary when installing an operating system service pack.
  • There are additional considerations for installing the Measurement Studio Help for Visual Studio 2012. Refer to the Installation Notes for Integrated Visual Studio 2012 Help section of this document for more information.

Installation Instructions

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.


  1. Log on as Administrator or as a user with administrator privileges.
  2. Launch Autorun.exe, either from the installation media or from the location to which you extracted the downloaded disc image. Select Install Measurement Studio 2013.
  3. In the Select Installation Option window, you can choose to activate Measurement Studio if you have a serial number, or you can choose to evaluate Measurement Studio.
  4. Select Measurement Studio 2013 support for the version or versions of Visual Studio you want to install support for.
  5. Select Device Drivers to install support for hardware.
  6. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen.
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.

Driver Support

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.


Activating Measurement Studio Licenses

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.


Concurrent Licensing

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.


Installation Notes for Integrated Visual Studio 2012 Help

You can view the NI Measurement Studio Help from within Microsoft's Help Viewer by:


  • Launching the Help Viewer from the Measurement Studio folder within the NI Launcher in Windows 8,
  • Selecting NI Measurement Studio Help from the Measurement Studio menu within Visual Studio, or
  • Selecting Help»View Help from the Visual Studio menu.

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.

Installing the Current Version of Measurement Studio over Previous Versions of Measurement Studio

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.


Note    NationalInstruments.Common.dll uses a publisher policy file to redirect applications to always use the newest version of NationalInstruments.Common.dll installed on the system, for each version of the .NET Framework. However, prior versions of NationalInstruments.Common.dll remain in the GAC after you install a newer version of Measurement Studio. National Instruments exerts extra effort to ensure that NationalInstruments.Common.dll is backward-compatible so that applications built against prior versions of Measurement Studio continue to work as expected.


Deployment Requirements

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.


Deployment Notes for Visual Studio 2012

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.


  • National Instruments recommends creating your installer in Visual Studio 2012 with the Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset, available at WiXToolset.org. The WiX toolset is a set of open source build tools that integrates into Visual Studio.
  • Measurement Studio merge modules for Visual Studio 2012 install the Measurement Studio assemblies by default to the global assembly cache (GAC). Measurement Studio merge modules for Visual Studio 2010 and 2008 install the Measurement Studio assemblies by default to the application folder. To install Measurement Studio assemblies for Visual Studio 2012 to the application folder, you must set the 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.
  • Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010 uses the same NationalInstruments.Common.dll assembly, which is built against the .NET Framework version 4.0.


How to Use NI Software with Microsoft Windows 8

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.


Using 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.

Pinning Frequently Used Applications

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

Finding All Programs

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.



Getting Started with Measurement Studio 2013

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.



Bug Fixes in Measurement Studio 2013

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.



Known Issues 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.


Measurement Studio 2013 Incompatibilities with Previous Versions of Measurement Studio

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.


  • Measurement Studio no longer ships support for Visual Studio 2005. Refer to ni.com/mstudio/legacysupport for more information on Measurement Studio support for legacy environments and languages.
  • Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012 does not include support for the Instrument I/O Assistant.
  • Measurement Studio support for Visual Studio 2012 does not include support for the Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) Configuration API.
  • Visual Studio 2012 does not support Microsoft Setup Projects for deployment. National Instruments recommends using the Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset for creating deployment projects. Refer to the Deploying Measurement Studio Windows Applications topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help for further information.
  • Measurement Studio merge modules for Visual Studio 2012 install Measurement Studio assemblies by default to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). This is a change from Measurement Studio merge modules for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010, which install Measurement Studio assemblies by default to the application folder
  • Several NI-VISA and NI-488.2 .NET support members are now obsolete. Refer to the Modifications to Existing .NET API Members section of the Measurement Studio Incompatibilities topic in the NI Measurement Studio Help for a list of these members.
  • For WPF controls, in Measurement Studio 2013 support for Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010, you can edit options with parameters for enumerated properties only from the Property Grid. However, in Measurement Studio 2012, you can edit these options from both the control's smart tag and the Property Grid. For example, in Measurement Studio 2012, you can select and edit the 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.


Legacy Languages and Frameworks

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:


  • Measurement Studio 2012, which includes support for Visual Studio 2010 (Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), Visual Studio 2008 (Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), Visual Studio 2005 (Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), and compatible hardware drivers.
  • Measurement Studio 2009, which includes support for Visual Studio 2008 (Visual C++ MFC, Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), Visual Studio 2005 (Visual C++ MFC, Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), Visual Studio 2003 (Visual C++ MFC, Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET), Visual Studio 6.0 (Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0), and compatible hardware drivers.
  • Measurement Studio C++ MFC for Visual Studio 2010 (Measurement Studio MFC 10), which includes Visual C++ MFC support for Visual Studio 2010.

To qualify to receive these products, you must meet one of the following criteria:


  1. You must maintain an active Measurement Studio Standard Service Program (SSP) contract; or
  2. You must have purchased the most recent version of Measurement Studio.

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.



Important Information

Copyright

©2003–2013 National Instruments. All rights reserved.


Under the copyright laws, this publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storing in an information retrieval system, or translating, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of National Instruments Corporation.


National Instruments respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same. NI software is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Where NI software may be used to reproduce software or other materials belonging to others, you may use NI software only to reproduce materials that you may reproduce in accordance with the terms of any applicable license or other legal restriction.


End-User License Agreements and Third-Party Legal Notices

You can find end-user license agreements (EULAs) and third-party legal notices in the following locations after installation:


  • Notices are located in the <National Instruments>\_Legal Information and <National Instruments> directories.
  • EULAs are located in the <National Instruments>\Shared\MDF\Legal\license directory.
  • Review <National Instruments>\_Legal Information.txt for information on including legal information in installers built with NI products.

Trademarks

LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, ni.com, the National Instruments corporate logo, and the Eagle logo are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation. Refer to the NI Trademarks and Logo Guidelines section on ni.com/trademarks for other National Instruments Trademarks.


Patents

For patents covering the National Instruments products/technology, refer to the appropriate location: Help»Patents in your software, the patents.txt file on your media, or the National Instruments Patent Notice at ni.com/patents.





To comment on National Instruments documentation, refer to the National Instruments Web site.


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