If you need higher level control than PID for your motion application
NI SoftMotion is highly recommandable. This software module will give you a trajectory generator, a spline engine and a complete motion API and it is independent from the hardware you use.
As a hardware option I would either recommend a
cRIO-System with an embedded controller or a cRIO R Series Expansion system with a PXI-7811R in a PXI chassis with an embedded controller running LabVIEW RT. It's mandatory to run the supervisory application on a RealTime target like the PXI or cRIO embedded controllers as it needs to run in synch with the control application on the FPGA.
FieldPoint or Compact FieldPoint is only an option if your control algorithms are allowed to run extremely slow (more than 10 ms control loop rate). Typical motion applications require control loop rates of 1 kHz and above. The cRIO and PXI/RIO solutions support control loop rates up to 100 kHz and should be a much better choice.
The solutions that I have proposed are of course much more complex than using a PCI-7344 motion controller as all the software layers that are present in the firmware of the PCI-7344 need to be implemented in software. Additionally it incorporates LabVIEW RT and LabVIEW FPGA programming. SoftMotion is a great alleviation as you can concentrate on the control algorithm and the rest is done for you. Especially the shipping examples help a lot to get started.
In my opinion SoftMotion in combination with LV RT, LV FPGA and a corresponding target hardware is one of the best and simplest solutions in the market to create your own motion controller with your own control algorithm.
After the release of SoftMotion it took me only one working day to learn the API, setup the hardware and modify an existing example. After that I had a running motion control application.
Everything is done in LabVIEW, even the real-time and the FPGA programming but it's not a good idea to start such kind of a project as a LabVIEW novice.
Best regards,
Jochen Klier
National Instruments Germany