National Instrument Labview

I'm just wondering if it is worth it to learn NI Labview if you are in industrial automation. IMO, the answer is yes but I haven't seen labview being used in an industrial environment.

Maybe I haven't seen the use of Labview in an industrial environment because I don't have a lot of working experience???

I have never seen Labview used in industry, it's not rugged enough.

We do however use it in our research lab for data logging.

Roy

Roy Matson said:

I have never seen Labview used in industry, it's not rugged enough.



Roy

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I have seen it in industry to monitor engine performance. It's as rugged as any other SCADA software, depends on the PC you load it on.

Mickey said:

I have seen it in industry to monitor engine performance. It's as rugged as any other SCADA software, depends on the PC you load it on.

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Their RIO product is extremely robust - I recall seeing a video where they drop it out of an airplane and hit it with a flamethrower. Physically, it looks rather like a conventional PLC but with a much greater variety of input cards, i.e. accelerometer and differential voltage inputs. It's not widely used in industry because it is generally more difficult than a PLC and its capabilities are really only needed for special tasks, such as condition monitoring and other forms of high-speed data acquisition.

I am curious... Keyence has a new 3d laser, but the software is not as robust as the vision systems. They mentioned using lab view, so I may ha w to look into it.

Labview is not common in the application of industrial process instrumentation.

I know guys in test & measurement labs and electronic production areas and they use Labview with their scopes and spectrum analyzers.

I had to download some part of Labview software to get the real-time GUI for my Rigol digital storage oscilloscope to work, but that's a bench tool for instrument troubleshooting, and infrequently used (more for digital comm problems than anything else).

Labview isn't common in industrial automation but it does appear from time to time. I've recently deployed a labview application as an HMI on some machinery that conducts tests on steel ropes (destructive and non-destructive). The choice to use Labview arose out of the need to: 1) Log data at high speed 2) Plot a graph of one variable against another rather than time 3) TCP comms to an optical measuring system.

Making an application foolproof and suitable for an industrial environment can be a challenge but comes down to the skill and experience of the programmer and how much effort you're prepared to put in.

The company I work for (until Monday) has deployed many Labview application in industrial environments with WinXP embedded operating systems on a fanless PC using a compact flash card rather than a hard disk. This is an extremely robust solution.

Nick

National Instruments makes fantastic hardware and software. They put approximately 40% of revenue back into R&D and are a repected leader in the test and measurement world- scientific, academic, and industrial.

In answer to your question, I would say that not having ladder logic would be a primary reason. Their Labview software product is extremely powerful, however the graphical format is much different than ladder logic and switching over would require an investment in time and money. Well worth it in my mind.

Their CompactRIO system with an internal FPGA (reprogrammable chip) offers a wide array of I/O cards and is quite durable. If you need high-speed control and analysis, this is the ticket.

Take a look at this demo. Not only am I impressed with the seamlessness of their Vision system/CompactRIO/Labview combination, but I found the table saw mechanism (not part of NI)to be pretty cool as well.

http://zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-903

I agree with ShaRK, lack of ladder logic and being more of a "computer programmers" interface probably limits it's use into machines that PLCs typically control and discussed in this forum.

It may become more favorable as PAC's become more accepted in industries, it's just another way to get to the final destination. You need to handle all the same tasks in whatever platform you use: it's al linputs, calculation/ manipulation, output for control, and process feedback to whoever needs to make sure the process is providing desired results in a safe, robust manner.