LabVIEW
where do I start (complete newbe)
Joe_H wrote:The best book to use to get started with is called LabVIEW for Everyone 3rd edition by Jeff travis and James Kring.
You can also use the getting started manual that comes with LV. It usually comes in PDF format too. there are also some tutorials out on the web that are for free.
And no you cannot learn the basics in 5 minutes. Yes you may be able to actually find what you are looking for on the functions pallete, put it on the block diagram (considering you know what that is) and right click on it and add controls and indicators in 5 minutes. But to know the basics will take you a couple of days. Years to master.
Okay, Joe:
I'll concede it takes 15 minutes to learn. But what you just described to me *is* the basic stuff. I taught someone how to program a VISA instrument in 15 minutes just by showing him where the stuff was and giving him general instructions on what a wire was and what the inputs and outputs were. He strung them up together himself and in 1/2 hr he was making drivers and the next day he was writing tests. Which actually is about exactly the time frame you suggested, by the way. I am in no way disagreeing with you. I think maybe our definitions of "basics" is different, that's all. 😉
My reasoning behind presenting it as simple is because I wanted to stress the SIMPLICITY of LabVIEW, which is its beauty, not HOW COMPLICATED it can be. Sure, buying all those books and clicking on all those links is a great way to learn, but the best way is to plop some stuff on the block diagram and go to town. I wanted to encourage that kind of exploration to the noob so he wouldn't be handicapped from the get-go by thinking it was a complicated thing to learn.
To me, trying to find the stuff was always harder than knowing what to do with it, even from the beginning. Even now, I just ues the search if it's something I haven't used often.
Please, I'm not trying to start a fight, or to demean anything you guys are doing. I certainly respect all your knowledge and don't mean to dismiss it flippantly, but it's not all that complicated to learn, either. 😉
Bill
Broken Arrow wrote:
billko wrote:
...I was going to do a "hello world," but...
Here it is....
Nice!
billko wrote:
Broken Arrow wrote:
billko wrote:
...I was going to do a "hello world," but...
Here it is....
Nice!
You should take a look at this one.
Or this one. (Try to figure out how it's done before jumping to the answer, which occurs later in the thread. You may need to have some background in earlier LabVIEW versions to figure it out, though. That's how I figured it out.)
Ray.R wrote:
Broken Arrow wrote:
billko wrote:Ehhh, actually you could learn the basics in about 5 minutes.
No you can not.
I agree with BrokenArrow.
No you cannot. You can hack... Do horrible code by abusing everything...
However, there is a way to learn faster..
First step:
1. Forget EVERYTHING you learned from the text-based language.
2. Forget the words "extern" and "Static".
3. Know that you can program without globals and locals
4. Sequence Structures are your ENEMY
5. Forget ALL that you do when writing text-based language code
6. Visit this forum often and ask many questions
7. Do not think of using structures that you used in text-based language
8. Have fun programming instead of writing text-based code (euh... should I mention that I'm compiling a VxWorks code as I write this? 😉 )
9. Read ALL of the Nuggets
10. Forget about what you know from text-based language
11. READ ALL of the Rube Goldberg code examples (and do laugh)
12. Locals are forbidden. Read the Why People Say that Locals are Bad thread
13. Look under Help > Find Examples and do some searches on some code examples. THey are old and badly written, but will get you started.
14. In case you are supersticious, I rephrase... Forget what you know from text-based language..
It takes more than 5 minutes to accomplish the above.
Welcome to the world of LabVIEW
R
Ray:
Is that Dilbert with a black eye, or is it just that way on my monitor? 🙂
One thing you mentioned was "forget about what you know from text-based language" but the funny thing is, sometimes relating it to text based languages helps a lot. Functions are functions, text or LabVIEW. Inputs and Outputs are parameters to be passed into and returned from functions. Where the analogy breaks down is with wiring. I guess it's like a pointer? It's not the data itself, it just points to where the data is coming from.
Wow. I think I just grasped what you (all) are saying. You are saying that, as all good programmers should do, diagram/flowchart/etc the danged thing first before you jump headlong into it! Agreed, wholeheartedly. I wasn't suggesting that hacking is the way to do anything, but it's a good way to learn how the interface works. Even though my LabVIEW instructor encourages exploration, he'd have a stroke if he thought I'd encourage random hacking to get the job done. No, I was talking about introducing the person to the very basics, to show how simple the interface is. It is designed to let you concetrate on how things fit together, not on whether a variable needs to be global or local. All means, when doing serious programming, follow "best practices!" (Even in the example I used about programming an instrument in 15 minutes, he wasn't hacking his test code.) If THIS is what you mean by "basics," then of course you are right. My definition of "basic" is "learn how to connect things together. Learn what a control is and what a function is. Learn how to manupulate data. THAT is what I think of as "basic." Please comment if you'd like, but if you'd rather just drop the subject altogether, that is fine with me, too. 🙂
Bill
