how to create a labview program and use it as a compiled prgram

[mechanical Engineer]

I am a mechanical engineer, and I have some formulas and equations that I used to obtain maximum thickness of pipelines and also in the design of steel structures, what I need now is to use Labview to put these huge number of formulas in one program. I can do that, but the problem after I make the program I want it to be used by anybody on  any PC which is not installed Labview on it, and that is the problem, I don't know if I can make an excel  sheet or something to be the interface that can be used by the user, and if I can, I hope that I can have the details of who to execute that.

[altenbach]

Once you have finished your LabVIEW program, you would use the application builder to create a standalone executable.

The application builder is included with LabVIEW professional or available as an upgrade

What are you trying to do with excel? I don't understand the second part of your post.

[mechanical Engineer]

thank you for replying. If its available can you show me how the steps to do that, I mean by excel sheet, is that I can send the o/p from the prgram to an excel sheet which will be the interface of the user, by other words the program will acquires the input from the excel sheet which is the inputs bt the user and it will send the result to this excel sheet as the result depending on the information given by the user. As an example the user enters the maximum allowable stress of the material, temp., pressure, and also some environmental data and the program gives the result as a thickness of the pipeline and also the type of material to be used.

[StephenB]

LabVIEW interacts with Microsoft Excel using its Active X hooks. Anything Microsoft has exposed in the Active X API, LabVIEW can do. This includes opening Excel, reading values, writing values, etc. Doing this can be tricky for a novice programmer and NI has created the Report Generation Toolkit for Microsoft Office that plugs into LabVIEW for a more streamlined experience. 

The Developer Zone is a good place to start a search looking for Active X Excel examples: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/fn/p/sn/n16:en/sb/navsRel?q=microsoft+excel+labview&x=0&y=0

As well as the Forum: http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=BreakPoint&message.id=2391 

Reading and writing to an open Excel file could become quite cumbersome however. If the Excel file is open and the user is interacting with it, writing to that same file will return an error saying that the file is currently open. It would have to end up like this: User opens file, modifies some fields, saves file and closes excel. LabVIEW program opens file, reads fields and writes a result, then opens Excel to display to the user the result.

Is there any specific reason you want to use Excel as your user interface? You can use the front panel of a LabVIEW application to enter the data and display the results, all while writing this data to an Excel file for logging/reference in the future. 

Message Edited by Stephen B on 11-17-2008 01:26 PM

[mechanical Engineer]

no it was an idea. All what i need that the labview program I create, can be used on any pc even if it is not having labview, so the user will deal only with an interface put in it values and obtains results from that interface! 

[TCPlomp]

After you have build your LabVIEW program you can compile it into a standalone executable (granting you have LabVIEW Full of Pro including Application builder).

This executable can run on any PC with the LabVIEW runtime engine installed.

The application builder can create a Windows installer that installs your app and the runtime engine as well.

If looks like you have a limited set of info present in the 'Excel' sheet am I right?

If so you could easily build a GUI that allows the user to enter the values needed and you could present a list of outcoming material descriptions.

This could easily be presented in a HTML file including tables, images etc.

Good luck,

Ton

[Wiebe@CARYA]

Like Ton said, it is probably easy to do this in LabVIEW, and using excel
has some huge disadvantages. The Excel version you are using when you
compile your application is the only excel version that your program will
work on. Even a different language will break your program.

Keeping your program "pure LabVIEW code" is always preferable...

Regards,

Wiebe.