Labview Features Covered
Numeric Operations, Basic Dataflow and Basic Indicators/Controls
Summary
Knowledge
Know what the circled icons (functions and controls) do.
Know the difference between various palette styles (modern, silver, classic….)
Know what the buttons on the tools palette all do
Know the different data types and how to convert between them when necessary
What does the wait icon do (the one that looks like a wristwatch)?
Skills to have
Make basic Vis using the above functions and controls. For example like the resistor divider calculator
example we did in class.
Run and single step through a VI
Basic labview operations like clean up broken wires, saving and opening, adding text and decorations,
finding errors, moving between windows, using context help and editing a block diagram and control
panel.
Book References
This is chapter 1 even though they don’t use all the numeric and Boolean functions and controls. Some
of the numeric functions aren’t use in any examples or not until some later chapter. You can also bring
up labview help, go to contents->Fundamentals, and read the through the first five or six chapters on
the basics.
Suggested Study Strategy
Try to do the problems at the end of chapter 1, redo any of the examples we did in class, create your
own functions with buttons, LEDs, math functions, controls and indicators. Single step through Vis until
you understand what is happening. Put indicators on all outputs and see what’s happening in the VI.
XY Graphs and Trig Functions
Knowledge
Know what the circled indicators do, what the differences are, how to use them
Understand the sin and cos functions on the mathematics palette
Skills
Be able to connect sin and cos functions to a waveform or XY indicator and do things like display
waveforms and circles
Book References
All of chapters1 and 2 should do it
Suggested Study Strategy
Work through the examples in the text. Don’t read the book – create the VIs that the book is doing.
Reading the book won’t help you.
While and For loops
Knowledge
Know how these work
Understand how the tunnels through the walls of the loops work, understand how indexing works…
Know the three main tunnel options
What is a shift register?
Skills
Be able to set up a for loop
Be able to set up a while loop and control the exit condition
Use shift registers in loops
Book References
All of chapters1 and 2 should do it. There’s a section in labview help->fundamentals on loops and other
structures.
Suggested Study Strategy
The same examples you did for the XY graphs above should do it. You can also try some of the end of
chapter problems to get better at applying while and for loops to real problems.
Arrays
Knowledge
Know the circled functions. Note that we might cover additional array functions later in the term and/or
you might find some of them useful when doing labs or your projects.
Know what a 1D array and a 2D array represent in labview and their relationship to array indicators and
controls
Know what it means to modify an array with a scalar numeric value
Skills
Be able to set up an array indicator or control using the “blank” array indicator/control and then adding
elements (numeric, string or other)
Set up arrays as indicators or controls using the right click->create method
Book References
All of chapters1 and 2 covers the basics. The first part of chapter 5 is helpful. There’s some more
material in chapter 6 but you have to get through a lot of math. Reading the help section-
>fundamentals->grouping data using strings, arrays, and clusters can also help if you kind of tune out
the material on clusters, which we’ve only briefly covered.
Suggested Study Strategy
The same examples you did for the XY graphs above should do a lot for you. Beyond that, for the array
operations above, just setting up some different VIs where you enter and display arrays is a good idea.
Strings
Knowledge
Know the circled functions. There are additional functions under “Additional String Functions” that I
won’t put on a quiz or test but might come in handy for programs. Under “Number/String Conversions”
just be aware of the main functions for converting string to number and vice versa.
Skills
Be able to process strings, look for specific fields/numbers in strings, assemble strings into larger strings.
Be able to manage arrays of strings (each array element is a string – similar to the 3D printer programs
we’ve been working on)
Book References
The book doesn’t do a good job of explaining strings and the lab view help section on strings is fairly
small. On the other hand, if you’ve pickup labview dataflow programming from the other sections,
string operations are a small jump forward.
Suggested Study Strategy
Use the examples I’ve done in class, most of which I’ve posted. You can also use the built-in labview
examples which are well documented. If you go to help->find examples->Fundamentals->Strings you
can load up VIs which cover most of the functions. Create your own examples using strings.
File I/O
Knowledge
The only I/O functions we’ve really looked at are the write and read spreadsheet functions that store
array contents into tab delimited files. Know how to use these.
Skills
Be able to set up a VI that writes an array to a file and reads from a file into an array
Book References
The first part of chapter 5.
Suggested Study Strategy
Work through the material in the first part of chapter 5 (up to about section 5.7)
Case Structures
Knowledge
Know the regular case structure (the one that starts with True/False) and the sequence structure. The
stacked sequence is basically identical to the regular sequence except that I guess it takes up less room
on the screen.
Know the differences between the flat sequence and the stacked sequence
Know how a case statement surrounded by a for loop (a state machine) is similar to a sequence
What is a shift register?
Skills
Be able to set up a VI that uses a true/false case structure
Set up a VI that expands on the true/false case structure into a multiple case structure switching on
numeric or other control inputs
Set up a sequence structure
Book References
Chapter 7.1 and 7.2 in the book. The rest of chapter 7 if you don’t get hung up on the math.
Suggested Study Strategy
Work through the material in sections 7.1 and 7.2 plus whatever examples we work on in class. I also
recommend working through the rest of chapter 7 if you don’t get hung up on the math. There’s a good
example to try on p 329 and try problems 1 and 6 from chapter 7.
Mathscript
Knowledge
Know what the mathscript node is for
Know how the formula node works (basically a simpler version of mathscript and without the separate
runtime window that makes it look like matlab)
Skills
Use the mathscript node to replace dataflow based math operations. Set up a mathscript node with
inputs, outputs and math operations.
Book References
All of chapter 3
Suggested Study Strategy
Work through the chapter 3 examples. There is a basic mathscript example under find examples-
>toolkits and modules->Mathscript RT module->Mathscript Fundamentals.
