Release Notes

This topic presents a summary of Nimbus 7 requirements, key features, and updates, as well as some known issues to be addressed in a future update.

Migrating Projects to Nimbus 7

Nimbus 7 includes an automatic project converter that will automatically update all relevant projects in your driver solution.

See the topic Converting Driver Projects From Earlier Versions of Nimbus for details.

Earlier Releases

Nimbus Prerequisites

Windows 10 or newer

Visual Studio 2022

Any of Community, Professional, or Enterprise editions are supported.

Important
It is highly recommended that the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 are installed when running Nimbus. Microsoft frequently makes important updates within major Visual Studio releases and Nimbus is updated in turn to track these changes. Running earlier versions of Visual Studio can lead to faulty behavior and/or performance issues.

Note
The exact set of Visual Studio components and workloads required is presented in the Visual Studio Extension Manager and automatically installed when the Nimbus package is installed.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Tip
The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is not installed by default on Windows 10 systems. It can be installed via Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off. There, check the box labeled .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0).

IVI Shared Componenents 3.0.3 (or newer)
IVI.NET Shared Componenents 3.0.0 (or newer)
For drivers that use VISA for I/O communications, Nimbus 7 requires VISA Shared Components 8.0.0 and VISA.NET Shared Components 8.0.0.
The VISA and VISA.NET Shared Components are typically installed by VISA vendor products, such as those from National Instruments or Keysight Technologies.

Key New Features and Updates

NuGet-based IVI.NET Drivers

The IVI Foundation has recently completed its work on updating the standards for IVI.NET drivers to include packaging of drivers in NuGet packages that can easily be distributed on feeds such as nuget.org. This greatly expands the usability, discoverability, and easy of distribution of IVI drivers and is the biggest step forward for IVI in many years.

Nimbus Driver Studio is the first, and only, tool that supports building NuGet-based IVI.NET drivers.

Support for .NET Core

Windows desktop development has shifted massively away from .NET Framework to .NET Core. The IVI Foundation now supports targeting .NET Core 6.0 and greater so that .NET Core client applications can finally use IVI.NET drivers.

Nimbus Driver Studio is the first, and only, tool that supports building IVI.NET drivers that target .NET Core.

Multi-Targeting .NET with a Single Codebase

While the advantages of .NET Core-based IVI drivers is clear, it is paramount that Nimbus customers have an efficient way to maintain existing IVI.NET driver inventories. Correspondingly, end users must maintain their existing .NET Framework-based systems for many years to come. For these reasons, Nimbus now supports multi-targeting in IVI.NET driver projects. This means that the same Nimbus IVI.NET driver project customers have had for years can be used to generate the same .NET Framework driver (with the same MSI-based installer it has always had) as well as an independent .NET Core driver that targets .NET 6.0 or greater. All this can be done using a single driver source code base, which greatly simplifies long-term development and maintenance.

Nimbus Driver Studio is the first, and only, tool that supports building IVI.NET drivers that multi-target .NET Framework and .NET Core from a single code base.

Known Issues

When creating a new driver project, the option to Place solution and project in the same directory must always be chosen. Attempting to manage a Nimbus driver solution with the .sln file inside the driver project folder (or any other Nimbus project folder) could lead to unpredictable results.
When a driver solution is opened, there are a variety of asynchronous operations that Visual Studio performs. One important operation is NuGet restore, which populates the project with all of the critical binaries and targets it needs to operate. If Driver Designer operations are attempted before the NuGet restore completes, then strange errors such as Undefined type Int32 could result.
In practice, this is rarely an issue, as the NuGet restore typically completes within the first few seconds of opening a solution. You can see the status of the NuGet restore in the Output Window.
IVI-COM and IVI-C help and setup projects show "broken reference" annotations (yellow warning triangles) on the icon for their project references to the driver project. These references are required for these projects to operate, and the references are indeed intact, but MSBuild currently has a bug that manifests when any custom SDK-style project references a native (C++) project. The same driver project references appear normal in IVI.NET help and setup projects.
These warning annotations are benign and can safely be ignored.
Merging of IVI.NET repeated capabilities is not currently supported in this release. All other aspects of IVI.NET repeated capabilities are fully implemented in this release.
Adding an instrument class to a driver after creating the driver project is not currently supported.

Other Resources

Nimbus 5 Release Notes