National Instruments vs Allen Bradley

Has anyone used both National Instruments Hardware and software and Allen Bradley hardware and software? I am specifically wondering about the PAC systems. It looks to me like labview is way more flexible and powerful but how good is the hardware?

SCG said:

Has anyone used both National Instruments Hardware and software and Allen Bradley hardware and software?

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Yes. Did some long-term life cycle machines for bearings. Labview for analyzing analog data and decision making off the data and handshaking with the AB h/w & s/w that was actually controlling the machine. I consider them (2) completely different and non-competing tools.

Why couldn't you use National's CompantRIO for control instead of Rockwell's contrologix processor and I/O? Or maybe a better question is what advantages are there is both?

SCG said:

Why couldn't you use National's CompantRIO for control instead of Rockwell's contrologix processor and I/O?

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It is not a matter of 'could' or 'couldn't', it is about which approach would lead you to the desired goal in the shortest and the easiest way. You could write your own C++ code for a PC from scratch to do what others would do with CLX or NI. However, that way would hardly be either the shortest or the easiest...

The answer is: it all really depends on the application.