Asynchronous call vi path

Question

I am trying to implement a splash screen that calls my main VI asynchronously and displays messages while the VI loads.  It all works properly in development system but it's not the case as an EXE.  This is my first attempt at calling a VI like this so i am sure that i am missing something simple. 
See the attached image.  The static reference points to a location on my server but I want to run the VI that is "Always Included" in my EXE build, not the VI from the server.  The VI Path returned here is a combination of the server path and the build location which is obviously not correct. 
What's really strange to me is that the main.vi does actually run, even though the path is wrong.  The splash screen shows messages received from main but when it gets to the loading config settings, it fails because the vi path is c:\program files\tester\main.exe\z\labview\tester and it can't find my INI file.  How do i load this VI dynamically and still be able to pass my notification refnum into it for my splash screen and return the proper VI path?  I tried removing the path property node below and just adding a path constant with main.vi as the value.  But it seems to be getting the path from the strict type reference (which i understand is for type only). 
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

You don't want to use a static VI reference - that defeats part of the purpose of having a splash screen! A static VI reference causes the referenced VI to be loaded into memory, and usually when you use a splash screen, you're expecting that it will take a while to load that VI and you want something visible on the screen while you're waiting. Instead of using a strict VI reference, create a constant from that reference, which will give you a VI type without referring to any specific VI (a bit like if you create a reference to a control, then create a constant from that reference). Although, if you do use a static VI reference, you can avoid all this by wiring a string containing "main.vi" instead of a path (Open VI Reference will also accept a string input). The fact that you're using a static VI reference, instead of a type specifier, explains why the Path property is valid.
The "funky" path is actually to be expected. LabVIEW now maintains relative paths within an executable, which allows multiple VIs with the same name to exist within an application (a requirement for supporting LabVIEW classes). A side effect is that since your VI is on a separate drive, you're getting what looks like an absolute path embedded within the EXE. This is now the normal behavior. If you don't want that, check the build options box that says "Use 8.x file layout."