It is not necessary to have Measurement Studio in order to communicate with DAQ cards in Visual Studio. NI provides a native .NET API for NI-DAQmx that is available as part of the NI-DAQmx driver and does not require Measurement Studio.
If Measurement Studio is installed, it will provide additional native .NET class libraries, integration, and code generation tools for Visual Studio. For example, Measurement Studio 7.0 and later adds the DAQ Assistant for code generation, integrated Visual Studio help, user interface .NET controls, and project wiards.
To install .NET support with the NI-DAQmx driver, refer to
Installing NI Software for Visual Studio C# or .NET Development. For NI-DAQmx .NET Library help documentation and examples, refer to
.NET Resources for NI Hardware and Software.
Additional Information
For more information on which versions of Visual Studio are compatible with the different DAQmx .NET Frameworks, please see the DAQmx readme:
Finding NI Readmes for Supported OS, ADE, Device, Modules and More.
Note: In order to install language support for Visual Studio 2008 C++ MFC, you must have Measurement Studio for Visual Studio 2008.