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WHAT DOES LabVIEW MEAN

LabVIEW stands for Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench.
A programming environment developed by National Instruments.
Defined as a programming environment in which you create programs using graphical notation. Hence
it is known as Graphical Structured Data Flow Programming Language (G-programming).
Hence it differs from traditional programming language like C, C++ and Java in which you program
with text.

The programming environment can run on Windows, MAC OS and LINUX
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VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION
Virtual instrumentation is the use of customizable software and
modular measurement hardware to create user-defined test and
measurement systems, called virtual instruments.
Traditional hardware instrumentation systems such as digital
multimeters and oscilloscopes are made up of pre-defined hardware
components.
Traditional hardware instrumentation systems are completely specific to
their stimulus, analysis, or measurement function. Because of their
hard-coded function, these systems are more limited in their versatility
than virtual instrumentation systems.
The primary difference between hardware instrumentation and virtual
instrumentation is that software is used to replace a large amount of
hardware.

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COMPONENTS OF VIRTUAL
INSTRUMENTATION
The heart of any virtual instrument is
flexible software. Every virtual instrument is
built on this flexible and powerful software.
Innovative engineer or scientist will apply
his / her domain expertise to customize the
software for defining specific measurement
and control application as per the
requirement.
The second virtual instrumentation
component is the modular I/O for
measurements that require higher
performance, resolution, or speeds.
The third virtual instrumentation element
is - popular and commercially available
computing platform
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WHY LabVIEW IS MUCH
PREFERRED BY ENGINEERS
AND SCIENTIST
LabVIEW can increase productivity by orders of magnitude Programs that takes week or months to
write using conventional programming language can be completed in hours using LabVIEW.

Using LabVIEW, we can create exactly the type of virtual instrument we need at a fraction of time and
the cost of traditional instrument.

LabVIEW provides a programming platform without the fuss of pointers and memory allocation what
we see in conventional / traditional programming language.
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LabVIEW START UP
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LabVIEW BLANK VI
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LabVIEW Front panel and
Block Diagram
With a click on Blank VI, the LabVIEW opens with two windows
Front Panel and Block Diagram.

Front panel is the window with which the GUI is created.

Blok Diagram is the window for developing the definition for GUI.
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Front Panel
Right mouse click to open important Controls palette.
These include graphical controls, knobs, sliders, text boxes,
LEDS, switches and others layers.
Subcategories are available for each layer.
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Block Diagram
Right mouse click to open important Functions palette.
These include acquisition tools, signal analysis, arithemetic tools
etc.
Subcategories are available for each layer.
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Applications
Data acquisition and analysis
Instrument control
Industrial automation
Control system
Image processing