Use VISAIC/VIC

You can launch VISAIC from the Start»Programs»National Instruments»VISA menu. You can launch VIC from the Start»Programs»National Instruments»VXI»NI-VXI API menu.

Note  The VIC utility is not part of the basic NI-VXI installation. If you want to use VIC, run the NI-VXI installer and select a "custom" installation instead of "typical." In the Select Features dialog box, enable the NI-VXI API Development option and continue as prompted. After you reboot, VIC is ready for use.

You can use these two programs to communicate with your devices interactively. You can use VISAIC to open a session to a VXI, GPIB, PXI, TCP/IP, or serial device. Once you open a session to the device, you can send and receive messages, view device attributes, and—if it is a VXI device—directly access the device's memory and registers.

VIC uses NI-VXI API functions to access the VXI bus. You can send and receive word serial messages using the WSwrt and WSrd functions, access device registers using VXIinReg and VXIoutReg, and directly access VXI memory space using VXIin and VXIout.

Both of these programs serve not only to establish initial communication with your devices, but also to verify that the NI-VISA and NI-VXI API libraries are correctly installed and functioning. If you cannot access a device with these utilities, chances are you cannot access it from your application. Once you determine how to access a device with VISAIC or VIC, you can use those same functions in your program.