Generating Arb Waveform

[Fataneh]

I have an NI-5411 PCI board and I'm using LabVIEW 7.1 Full version. I'd like to be able to generate a user defined waveform from LabVIEW thru my board.

I've been playing with "Simulate Arbitrary Signal" and "NI-FGEN Express (Arb)" Express VIs. The "Simulate Arbitrary Signal" VI requires the waveform to be specified point by point, of course. And the "NI-FGEN Express (Arb)" VI requires a .hws (Hierarchical Waveform Storage) file type. How do I create such a file? Also, I've heard of tools that allow you to "draw" the waveform and save it in an image file and then feed that image file into the function generator. Can I do something like that for the 5411 board?

Also, my waveform is actually a bunch of pulses with various pulse widths, pulse to pulse intervals, and amplitudes (hence the desire to define it myself), superimposed on a ramp function. How do I do that?

Thanx for any help.

Fataneh

[abhisheknag]

Hello Fataneh,

There is a National Instruments' software called the Analog Waveform Editor (AWE) which should enable you to define the waveform you have described. AWE allows you to save these arbitrary waveforms as .hws files which you can later read in LabVIEW and generate using your 5411. You can get more details about AWE at - http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/13051.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Abhishek

[Fataneh]

Abhishek,
Thank you. Do you know if there's a demo I can download to get an idea before paying $695 for the software?

Fataneh

[abhisheknag]

Hello Fataneh,

You can get the evaluation at - http://snipurl.com/AWEeval. It's about 100 MB. You could also call your local National Instruments office and ask them to ship you a CD with the evaluation.

Regards,

Abhishek