New Tools for Virtual Instrument Development in Visual Basic for Windows
95

ComponentWorks Leverages off the 32-Bit OLE Control Architecture of Visual
Basic 4.0

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- JAN. 2, 1996 -- National Instruments - The Virtual
Instrumentation Company - announced today a collection of virtual
instrumentation add-on controls and libraries that extends Visual Basic
from a general-purpose programming tool to a world-class virtual
instrumentation development environment. ComponentWorks consists of four
major functional components for building virtual instruments: data
acquisition (DAQ) controls; GPIB instrument drivers; analysis libraries;
and user interface controls for creating real-time graphs, meters, knobs,
tanks, thermometers, and gauges in Visual Basic. Users can combine these
instrumentation-focused 32-bit OLE controls and DLLs with other available
third-party OLE controls to quickly and easily build extensive virtual
instruments in Visual Basic.

ComponentWorks addresses the growing community of Visual Basic developers
working in scientific and engineering industries. "The Visual Basic 32-bit
OLE control architecture opens up exciting new opportunities for our
users," says John Pasquarette, National Instruments Visual Development
Tools Marketing Manager. "The OLE control property sheet interface in
Visual Basic 4.0 simplifies common programming tasks for configuring data
acquisition boards, acquiring data, and designing and building virtual
instrument displays."

VISUAL BASIC FOR DATA ACQUISITION

With the ComponentWorks DAQ controls, users receive a series of 32- bit OLE
controls for controlling National Instruments DAQ hardware. With
ComponentWorks, DAQ programming is simplified to setting a collection of
DAQ properties. For example, users can add the analog input control and
set properties for input channels, acquisition rate, triggering, and
timing signals through property sheets. The control simply generates an
event when the data buffer is full, passing the data array to Visual Basic
source code for processing.

VISUAL BASIC FOR INSTRUMENT CONTROL

For GPIB control, ComponentWorks offers a collection of GPIB instrument
drivers packaged as standard 32-bit DLLs for controlling more than 70
instruments from Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, Keithley, Fluke, Wavetek, and
more. Instrument drivers deliver high-level functions for controlling a
particular instrument, eliminating the need to program the instrument
using low-level GPIB commands. These instrument drivers are based on the
LabWindows/CVI instrument driver library, which has become an established
standard through the VXIplug&play Systems Alliance.

VISUAL BASIC FOR ANALYSIS

The ComponentWorks Base Package includes a standard Analysis Library for
performing statistics computations, such as finding the mean, standard
deviation, and maximum and minimum values of an array. The ComponentWorks
Full Development System includes the ComponentWorks Advanced Analysis
Library, a 32-bit DLL with signal processing, curve- fitting, statistics,
signal generation, complex algebra, and matrix operations. With the
Advanced Analysis Library, users can perform high-speed fast Fourier
transforms (FFTs), power spectrum, filtering, and windowing operations on
waveforms acquired using the ComponentWorks DAQ controls.

VISUAL BASIC FOR USER INTERFACE DEVELOPMENT

To display data, ComponentWorks includes a collection of user interface
objects packaged as OLE controls. The ComponentWorks user interface
controls are very similar to the controls available in LabVIEW and
LabWindows/CVI. The radial control includes knobs, meters, gauges, and
dials. The slider control includes vertical and horizontal sliders, a tank
control, and a thermometer control. Users can configure the boolean
control as an LED or a binary switch. The graph control can display
high-speed waveform data or real-time datapoints in strip chart mode.

ABOUT NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

National Instruments, headquartered in Austin, Texas, manufactures software
and hardware products for PCs and workstations that scientists and
engineers worldwide use to build virtual instrumentation systems. These
systems are used for research and industrial applications, such as
automated testing, laboratory automation, advanced research, industrial
control, factory automation, physiological monitoring, numerical analysis,
and data visualization.

National Instruments stock is traded on the NASDAQ National Market System
under the symbol NATI. Further information on National Instruments may be
obtained from the company's SEC filings or by directly contacting the
company's Investor Relations Department at (512) 349-5090.

AVAILABILITY AND FOR MORE INFORMATION

The ComponentWorks Full Development System and ComponentWorks Base Package
will be available in Q1 1996. For more information about ComponentWorks,
contact:

National Instruments
6504 Bridge Point Parkway
Austin, Texas 78730-5039
(512) 794-0100

Or call toll free in the U.S. and Canada at (800) 433-3488, fax (512)
794-8411, e-mail info@natinst.com. Readers can also access information
through the company's InstrumentationWeb at http://www.natinst.com/
 
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