Documents written in labview by our engineer, now left company, cannot be read

[mrkped]

One of our engineers has written documents in Labview and we cannot now read them. They are held on our company servers. We have used the web for document extensions and was routed to this site onto which we have duly registered. Is there a read-only program or similar we can download to read our documents please? I am not a technician rather, a member of the senior management team. Thanks.

[Coq_Rouge]

Can you elaborate more on why you can not read those documents?

[MattWhitlock]

Hello,

LabVIEW is a programming language and files with .VI extensions are essentially programs / source-code.  You can download a fully functional trial version of LabVIEW here, or go to http://www.ni.com/contact for more options to get help with this.  There are a large number of people who use LabVIEW daily and would be glad to assist you.

[Coq_Rouge]

Yes that is correct. Labview files is cryptic unless you have a Labview development system for reading those files. I hope the engineer did not password protect those files, or even worse removed the diagrams.

[mrkped]

Thanks for responding.

OK the file extensions are in a version which I do not have on the PC nor can I get via the web. When I look at the file name it responds with 'Adaptive filter rev1.vi' It is neither ticked Read-only or Hidden. The 'Opens with' is completed as Unknown.

When I searched the web via the autolink I came to your site and hence commenced this enquiry. M.

[Coq_Rouge]

Copy the files, and take them to a computer which have Labview installed. As pointed out Labview is not a text based program language 😉

[parthabe]

Like Matt already said, you need the LabVIEW Development System(Evaluation/Licensed) to open the VI(s) you have.

BTW, they are not documents, they are called Virtual Instruments - VIs, meaning software program or the source code.

It has 2 components - Front panel & Block Diagram - both of them fully graphical. You may get a feel of VB when you see LV's FP, but the BD is also fully graphical in LV, unlike the text coding in VB.

The prrgramming paradigm of LabVIEW is based on "Dataflow" model, whereas test-based programming languages are generally of Sequential execution model.

Message Edited by parthabe on 10-21-2009 03:29 AM

[mrkped]

OK, Is this easier than downloading the trial version (I noted it was a 755mb file) please? If either method is good, is there a shorter program rather than having to download the whole one please?

[parthabe]

Evaluation version is a free 30-day trial, with all the features of the licensed version.

So, you decide for yourself which way is easy to go...

Also, try to download the LV 2009 f2 patch that was released just a few weeks ago. It has quite a no. of good fixes for some of the already known issues.

Message Edited by parthabe on 10-21-2009 03:39 AM

[DeOdderKeith]

I would be more than happy to "translate" these documents (VI's) into Text-based documentation.

:manhappy: 

DOK