Need information on LabView

[Maranello]

Hi,
I am currently learning some facts of Graphic Designing. Here I came under a term called LabView. What is it actually. Is it a animation designing software or any other programming tool. The concept of LabView is not so clear to me. I am familiar with 3D studio and other advance Graphic software. What is the main function of this tool and in what field does it is used usually. Where can I download the same. Please list some key features of this tool. Thanks in advance.

[JonathanD]

LabView stands for Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench. This means that it is a kind of a platform and a development environment. This is used for a visual programming language. It is a highly advanced graphical designing tool fully dedicated to programming needs. If you work is limited to animation then this not a right tool for you. You can say it is a kind of a programming language. The best feature of this language is that it is widely used and shared. It is edited frequently by the users which keeps on adding up more enhancing feature to it.

[chroma]

The tool is used for two purposes. The first one is Dataflow and the second one is Graphical programming. Under the first one Dataflow programming, it is also called as G language. Here the execution of a program is determined through th LV-source code. In this the programmer links different function-nodes with the help of creating wires. Thus the wire act as the key in execution of node as soon as the data appears. The two terms Multi-processing and multi-threading devices are exploited automatically by the inbuilt scheduler. Now in the case of Graphical programming the tool is used to generate user interfaces. The programs which run under it are called as virtual instruments. They are divided in 3 components. Block diagram, connector and front panel. So if you want to create your own programs then this is a highly advanced tool.

[Glenny]

You can try to get a demo version of LabView 2009 and get a feel of it. It is a highly advanced programming language which works in GUI mode. The latest version comes with multiple features like VI Snippets Tool which offers a Drag and drop service for graphical code, 3D Math Plots, Partial Diagram Cleanup, VI Recursion, Parallel For Loops, Enhanced Icon Editor, etc and much more. You can visit the official site for more details.