Compatibility of developed Vision library with NI Vision Builder AI

Question

We developed a specific Vision library using NI LabVIEW and Vision Toolkit.
My requirement is to identify the compatiblity of this library with NI Vision Builder AI.Can we use the existing VI's with Vision builder?
Please provide me your comments asap.
Regards:
Vaibhav Kanchan
Sr. Engineer
NI Certified LabVIEW Developer(CLD)
NI Certified TestStand Developer(CTD}

Answer 1

There are multiple ways to add functionality to Vision Builder AI using a set of VIs you wrote:
1) Vision Builder AI can run a VI you write that use your VIs using the Run LabVIEW VI step.
2) You can also develop a custom step (that include the configuration page) for a better user experience, using the VBAI SDK, and use your VIs inside.
With these 2 solutions, you will need to use a specific version of LabVIEW to integrate your library, as Vision Builder AI is a LabVIEW application, and VBAI will execute the code from the Run LabVIEW step, or custom step using the LabVIEW runtine engine that it was built with. The version of LabVIEW depends on the version of VBAI. For example, for VBAI 2011SP1, you need to use LabVIEW 2010.
3) You can automate/drive Vision Builder AI from LabVIEW on Windows. (Open an inspection, run once, run continuously, etc, and get the resulting results and image that you can further process using your library. You can use the API on Windows with any version of LabVIEW.
For example, the VBAI 2011 API supports LabVIEW 8.5 through 2011.
You will run your developped application on Windows only, but it will be able to control Vision Builder AI running on remote targets.
If you're running Vision Builder AI on Windows, I see no compatibility issues with any of the above solution, except for using the correct version of LabVIEW in the first 2 solutions I mentioned. Using 1) and 2), you will also be able to develop code that can run on targets that Vision Builder AI supports, like smart cameras, and embedded vision systems.
If you plan to support remote targets, like smart cameras or Embedded Vision Systems, there are things to consider for your library to be compatible:
These targets run different operating systems: some run Pharlap, some run VxWorks, all run LabVIEW real-time on these OSes. If you used LabVIEW and Vision Development module to build you library based on VDM, the only thing to consider is to make sure to use the same version of LabVIEW and Vision Development Module installed on the target. Let me explain:
When you configure one of these remote targets from Vision Builder AI running on the Windows host machine, we install an image that contains a specific version of LabVIEW Real-time and Vision Development Module (For example, in the case of VBAI 2011 SP1, the remote target image has LabVIEW Real-Time 2010 and Vision Development Module 2011). Those should be the versions you need to use to create your VI to run with the Run LabVIEW step or custom step). We ran into some compatibility issues when customers update their Windows machine with a newer version of Vision Development Module, and write a VI or custom step they want to run in VBAI, that uses a new function that is not supported with the DLLs installed on the target.
If your Vision Library uses some other DLLs (code you may have written in text based language or third party DLL), you will have to recompile the DLL for the operating system of the target (Pharlap or VXWorks, depending on the target) for the code to work on the remote target.
Hope this helps and is not too confusing.
Best regards,
-Christophe