Announcing... the LabVIEW 2018 Beta Program

[LisaEly]

Greetings,

You are invited to register to participate in the LabVIEW 2018 Platform Beta Program.

You can register by visiting http://www.ni.com/beta and selecting "LabVIEW 2018" from the list of beta programs.  Please be sure and enter your complete address information in Western characters.  All customers outside the United States will have to pass Export Compliance as defined here.

Please complete the profile questions to help us understand your experience and use cases with LabVIEW.  This information can be critical in whether we accept you into the Beta program or not so more information is better.  Make sure you agree to the Terms and Conditions (T&C) of the beta program so that you can complete your registration.

After you register, please be patient while the beta coordinator processes your application.  You will be notified if you have been approved. Registration does not necessarily guarantee you a position in the beta program. Determination of acceptance into the program is up to the sole discretion of National Instruments.

We will have a private section of the Discussion Forums set up for beta users to discuss the beta version of the LabVIEW 2018 Platform. All questions or comments regarding a LabVIEW product that is in beta must be discussed in this private forum.  Make sure and include your forum alias in your application.  This will allow us to more easily grant your access to the LabVIEW Beta forum page.

Thank you for your interest in helping us test LabVIEW.

Lisa Ely

LabVIEW Beta Coordinator

National Instruments

• Tags:
• LabVIEW Beta

[Freelion8]

Hi

What is different in LV 2018 than 2017 version. I am currently using 2017 developer suite so you think it is worth to try 2018 since there are significant changes in it or it is just slightly different than 2017?

[M.AlHussein]

Interested

[Bob_Schor]

Every Version of LabVIEW has some differences ("improvements"), sometimes little things that simplify creating Block Diagrams, sometimes a new set of Icons that "dress up" the Front Panel, sometimes entirely new Features (LabVIEW 2016 introduced Channel Wires as a full feature, LabVIEW 2017 introduced malleable VIs).  Some active LabVIEW Developers are invited to participate in the Beta Program, where they have a chance to test (and provide feedback to NI) planned additions and "feature-retirements" (rare) to LabVIEW when the new Release is announced at NI Week (this year it is May 21-24, in Austin, Texas).  However, until NI Week, information on the new Release is generally not available (I believe Beta participants are bound by a non-disclosure agreement).

Be patient.  If you are happy with the current release of LabVIEW, and the Release is not more than, say, 2 years old, you should continue developing with it, and when the new Release comes out, look at its features, and feel free to ask (in, say, July) how users in the Forum like the new version.

Bob Schor

[DavidBajzek]

Hi!

I don't understand the sense of a parallel existence of a new version of Labview with Labview NXG. Why is National Instruments continueing to develope both branches? Isn't that expensive and ineffective?

[billko]

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@DavidBajzek wrote:

Hi!

I don't understand the sense of a parallel existence of a new version of Labview with Labview NXG. Why is National Instruments continueing to develope both branches? Isn't that expensive and ineffective?

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IMHO, NXG is in its infancy.  It's the next generation.  The current generation is still very relevant and I'm sure that, until NXG can stand on its own two legs as far as reliability, toolkits and drivers go, the different LabVIEW generations will continue to be referred to as "LabVIEW" and "LabVIEW NXG" instead of "LabVIEW Classic" and "LabVIEW".

So, to me, it seems to make sense to have parallel development.  For now.

[crossrulz]

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@DavidBajzek wrote: Why is National Instruments continueing to develope both branches? Isn't that expensive and ineffective?

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1. NXG is nowhere close to the feature parity as "classic" LabVIEW.  Once that happens, you will see a decline in "classic" LabVIEW features to just major bug fixes to only driver and OS support to deprecation (or so was the plan I was given by NI).

2. New features in LabVIEW are often used as a test for something to put in NXG.  And a lot of that code should be a simple port or written so it will work in both.

3. Remember that the compiler is actually the same between "classic" and NXG.  So any improvements to drive the compiler will benefit NXG.

So expensive and ineffective?  Not really.  But there is a lot of effort going into NXG since it is a ground-up rewrite of the IDE.

[rrawer]

That is very true - in Addition porting a more complex application von classic LabVIEW to NXG using the Code Conversion Utility (2.0) is extremely time consuming. i had a look at one of our smaller projects and still I had the Impression, that the conversion (even though the Tools does a great Job allready) would be still to close to rewriting with some (substantial) automated help...

So I hope that

a) the Code Conversion Utility 3.0 improves even further 

b) Classic LabVIEW will sontinue for a fiew years

becasue if the conversion is so close to rewriting then one must consider rewriting using another language/IDE as an option...

[CDuck]

When will LabVIEW 2018 be official?

[altenbach]

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@CDuck wrote:

When will LabVIEW 2018 be official?

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In the past, new versions were released at NI week, which starts on Monday. No guarantees, but stay tuned. 🙂