Can I use Labview 7 to communicate with an Alan Bradly Ultra3000 servo drive?

[nislyj]

I am hoping to find some way to be able to control an Alan Bradly Ultra3000 Digital Servo Drive and read back position, velocity, and current values with Labview 7. Currently, I am able to control the Drive through a serial port with AB's Ultraware software. It can display all of the values and traces I need on the screen; it's just that I can't record anything and I can't customize a user interface for the operator. (Something the Labview seems to excel at) I am very new to Labview and motion control so please take me from the beginning. Thank you very much for your time and patience.

[Julie S]

From the Allen-Bradley website for Ultraware (http://www.ab.com/motion/software/ultraware.html) it looks like the software comes with C functions in a DLL. You can call these C functions from LabVIEW using the Call Library Node. Take a look at chapter 2 in the Using External Code in LabVIEW manual for more information on how to do this:
http://digital.ni.com/manuals.nsf/webAdvsearch/8D930295FFBF9F7686256D2C00624728?OpenDocument&vid=niwc&node=132100_US

This will allow you to call individual functions in LabVIEW and input/output data from them. Then you can use LabVIEW to save the data to a file and also create the user interface.

Hope this helps.
-Julie S
Applications Engineer
National Instruments