The key to understanding the Waveform Palette, which are a list of LabVIEW Functions that use Waveforms, is to understand the basic question, "What is a LabVIEW Waveform?". Following @billko's suggestion, typing "LabVIEW Waveform" into Google will bring you to a brief answer to this question, which I'll paraphrase/restate in from an "operational" point-of-view:
As an Engineering Workbench (the "EW" part of "LabVIEW"), acquiring and processing sampled data is a common situation in LabVIEW. Sampled data can be characterized by several quanitites -- the (typically fixed) Sampling Rate (or, equivalently, Sampling Interval), the number of samples acquired at a time, the time the (first) sample is acquired, and the Sample data, themselves. LabVIEW combines these quantities in a Cluster (you do need to understand Clusters, but that's another topic) having three components: t0, a TimeStamp representing the time of the first Sample; dt, the Sampling Interval (in seconds), and Y, an Array that represents both the Number of Samples being acquired (often 1000, as Engineers like Round Numbers) and the Samples, themselves (the elements of Y).
One "source" of Waveforms is a DAQmx Read function. If, for example, you are acquiring Analog Data, and tell DAQmx you want to acquire 1000 Samples at 1 KHz continuously (meaning as soon as you collect the first 1000 and present them to the User, you continue collecting the next 1000), you can "wrap" the DAQmx Read function in a While Loop and every 1000 x 0.001 s = 1 sec the Read will deliver you a 1000-point Sample. DAQmx allows you to see the sample in several formats, including as a Waveform, which is a single "patterned" wire. If you wire this to a Waveform Chart, you will be able to see your data appear.
Bob Schor
