School is giving out LabView, but I have to go to a training seminar to get it. Worth my time?

[Leros]

My school is giving out NI LabVIEW, but in order to get it, I have to attend a 90 minute traning seminar. Is it worth my time? Is LabView good software?

 

[jmcoreymv]

You get any hardware with it?

 

[Leros]

Originally posted by: jmcoreymv
You get any hardware with it?

Just a CD.

 

[Cruisin1]

Its pretty cool, quite useful if you plan on automating testing of hardware.

 

[jagec]

What do you plan on using it for? If you do a lot of serious tinkering, it can be pretty handy indeed. It's what we use in the lab to run the ISS table.

 

[Special K]

If you are trying to write a program to interact with any external hardware or devices, Labview can speed up the development process dramatically. As an example - if you want to send or receive bytes over a serial port, in labview all you have to do is drop down a builtin icon function - "read bytes from serial port" or "send bytes to serial port", and you're done. I have absolutely no idea how to do that in C, but I'd imagine it would be significantly more complex.

 

[jessicak]

sure why not? If you don't have to pay any money and it is only 90 minutes of your time. I know lots of people who do really awesome stuff with it.

*edit* I know that if my school offered it then I would for sure do it. I am an EE but have never actually used the software although lots of people that work at my company do.

 

[PottedMeat]

Originally posted by: Special K
If you are trying to write a program to interact with any external hardware or devices, Labview can speed up the development process dramatically. As an example - if you want to send or receive bytes over a serial port, in labview all you have to do is drop down a builtin icon function - "read bytes from serial port" or "send bytes to serial port", and you're done. I have absolutely no idea how to do that in C, but I'd imagine it would be significantly more complex.

It's not that much more difficult in C but you have to know how to access the hardware - but it's considerably easier in LabView as he said - using functional modules and interconnecting their data with 'wires' in a graphical interface. If you were streaming data from a serial port device and wanted to do a FFT on the data, you'd use a few modules to collect the data and feed it into a FFT module. Then wire it up to a x-y axis type graph or something and make it pretty with flashing lights or whatever.

 

[jamesave]

yes

 

[cKGunslinger]

I'd do it.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: Leros
My school is giving out NI LabVIEW, but in order to get it, I have to attend a 90 minute traning seminar. Is it worth my time? Is LabView good software?

LabVIEW is pretty cool. It has become an official programming language.
You can make all kinds of applications with it without controlling any hardware.
Worth it? Yes.

I've been using it since 1992.

 

[Leros]

Looks like I should get it. I'm a freshman ECE major, btw.