They could certainly be wired differently and without a local variable. There's almost certainly no noticeable difference in performance. I'm not sure whether these VIs were created by someone or whether that's the way the Import CVI Instrument Driver does it's job. All IVI drivers start as CVI code. Of course, some programmer had to write the program that converts CVI to LabVIEW and maybe that person could answer why it was done that may.
