Embedding the Toolkit in Your Application

Using Toolkit VIs in your own LabVIEW application is very straightforward. In this discussion, we will call the computer on which your app is written the development environment, and the one on which it is intended to be used the target environment.

Distributing a compiled LabVIEW app (Application Builder)

If you compile your app for distribution using the LabVIEW Application Builder, you only need a licensed copy of the Toolkit on the development computer. The Toolkit and its plotting runtime are “bootstrapped”, and are pulled in automatically from vi.lib when you compile your app. Nothing special needs to be installed on the target computer.

Distributing a native LabVIEW app (Development Environment)

If your app requires the full LabVIEW development environment to run, both the development and target computers must have a licensed copy of the Toolkit installed. Simply install and activate the Toolkit as normal, using the VI Package Manager (2014 or later).

A note on the plotting cache

A small number of files, which support the plotting subsystem, are extracted into a cache directory when the Toolkit is first run on any platform. They are placed in the “local” AppData directory, e.g. C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local. This directory will need to be readable, writable, and executable on any platform on which the Toolkit is installed. These permissions are the default on all versions of Windows. The amount of disk space used for cache files is very small; less than 10 MB.