MAX gives you a very useful but limited ability to manipulate your DAQ board's i/o signals. It's often used in place of a full-fledged user program during initial setup and later during troubleshooting because it provides an NI-controlled interface to the DAQ hardware that isn't corrupted by possible user programming bugs. I think you probably ought to use MAX first to work out all the appropriate signals and connections before trying to use your friend's program.
You'll also need to understand the basic principle of operation for your friend's program and the stepper driver board. If you're using a different motor or driver, you may have incompatibilities.
What DAQ board do you have? Who makes the drive board? The signals you mentioned (STEP, DIRECTION, PRESET, and CLOCK) are not a familiar set to me. DIRECTION is very likely a digital bit to determine whether to step CW or CCW. Either STEP or CLOCK (or both?) should probably be a counter pulse train. I've usually seen either one or the other word used in a stepper interface, but not both at once so I'm not sure what's up with that. I really couldn't guess what function PRESET means. And you'll also need your digital GROUND or RETURN connection(s).
As for "assigning pins" to the functions: I would approach it a little differently. The issue is that you can't arbitrarily assign any old signal to any old pin. For example, some pins are for analog input and you can't generate digital bits on them.
So..... First determine what kind of signals you need for each functions (digital bit?, counter pulse train?), then find out which pins from you DAQ board can produce the right signal, and finally wire them up. At that point, you can choose either MAX or LabVIEW programming to put signals onto those pins. MAX will be best for initial testing, but the final app almost always needs to be based on programming.
-Kevin P.
ALERT! LabVIEW's subscription-only policy came to an end (finally!). Unfortunately, pricing favors the captured and committed over new adopters -- so tread carefully.
