NI's latest Integrated development environment for test, measurement and control applications.

LabWindows/CVI 8.1 features new, easy-to-use distributed communication and control tools to help engineers maximise their productivity. Using the new Network Variable Library, engineers can publish and share live measurement data between test systems located on the factory floor and remote supervisory machines without the complexity of low-level TCP programming, making it easy for them to design and manage large applications that publish measurement data. The network variables in LabWindows/CVI 8.1 also give engineers the option to remotely monitor and control applications developed in National Instruments LabVIEW or Microsoft Visual Studio. In addition, engineers can use LabWindows/CVI to deploy their test and control applications to multiple operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux® and select real-time operating systems.

“As a test engineer, and not a software engineer, NI LabWindows/CVI gives me the tools to be extremely productive, while still allowing me to develop powerful, professional test and measurement applications,” said Eric Furst, Test Design Engineer at Northrop Grumman. “The user-friendly features save more than 75 percent of my development time by abstracting low-level details that other environments unnecessarily expose.”

The latest version of LabWindows/CVI introduces enhanced mechanisms to store and visualise acquired Windows and real-time data. One new feature, the Technical Data Management (TDM) Streaming Library, gives engineers an efficient method of storing measurement data and descriptors for quick post analysis and high-speed data streaming. LabWindows/CVI 8.1 also provides enhancements such as native Windows style controls, which help engineers create professional applications that are similar in appearance to Windows theme-based controls, and editable graphs that make it easy for engineers to customise their user experience to better visualise and inspect their test and control data.

“For nearly 20 years, LabWindows/CVI has given ANSI C programmers an intuitive development environment for creating powerful test and measurement applications,” said John Pasquarette, Director of Software Marketing at National Instruments. “With the release of LabWindows/CVI 8.1, National Instruments is extending the platform even further, giving engineers new tools to streamline their application development processes and shorten their time to deployment.”

National Instruments offers engineers essential technologies for test, which combine high-performance hardware, flexible software and innovative timing and synchronisation technology for test and design applications. LabWindows/CVI 8.1 seamlessly integrates with a wide variety of I/O, including the latest NI hardware such as the NI PXIe-6259, one of the industry’s first data acquisition (DAQ) modules for PXI Express. In addition, engineers can use the LabWindows/CVI Real-Time Module to create and deploy reliable and deterministic applications on PC and PXI dedicated real-time targets.