Hi MrBean,
Unfortunately there isn't a real good method for simply equating any
development of TestStand directly into a monetary sum, or even hours of
work for that matter. You could try doing something with the number of
steps in your Main and Callback sequences I suppose, but generally
speaking the sequence development is the most straightforward and
quickest part of development.
The customization of Process Models, Operator Interfaces, Reporting,
Database collection, etc. tends to be the most complicated areas of
TestStand development (at least in my experience). On top of that,
because TestStand can use code modules from any number of languages,
this development time would be dependant on the language being used
(LabVIEW vs C# for example). It may be possible to create some metrics
based on these three areas (step number, customization, and code module
development time), but I imagine fine tuning these metrics could get
messy.
One thing you may want to consider is speaking with our Alliance
members and seeing what they charge for a TestStand project on the same
level as what you are doing.
The National Instruments Alliance Partner program is a worldwide
network of more than 600 consultants, system integrators, developers,
channel partners, and industry experts who partner with NI to provide
complete, high-quality virtual instrumentation solutions to customers.
You can find more about the Alliance Partner Program at www.ni.com/alliance
Thanks MrBean, have a good one.
Dan Weiland
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
www.ni.com/support
Dan Weiland
