Hi Jeff,
Ideally you shouldn't run into any problems upgrading your cRIO system and its application to LV 8, but there is always the possibility that something may not migrate smoothly. Depending on the complexity of your application is how many different things you would have to go through.
For upgrading the cRIO controller, you should just need to upgrade software in MAX and that's it. You really don't need to reformat the cRIO, but since the operation takes only a few seconds, you can do so for your peace of mind.
For your progam, you can use the following tool that ships with LV FPGA 8.x that migrates FPGA programs written in LV 7.1 to the new LV 8.x project. You can find help about that tool in the LV Help if you just search for "Import FPGA Files" in the Index tab. You can also access the help by launching the tool and clicking its help button: Tools>>FPGA Module>>Import FPGA Files from LV FPGA Module 1.x
I suggest you migrate your program first and upgrade the controller at last. That way your LV 7 app will continue working and you wouldn't have to reinstall LV 7 on the controller if something went wrong with the migration. Be aware you will have to recompile your FPGA VI(s) and create a LV 8.x RT startup application if you are using one.
Hope this helps. BTW, if you are using LV 8.0, I'd suggest you consider using LV 8.2 since it has several improvements over 8.0, some new features and is faster.
JMota
National Instruments R&D
