By DE Editors

LabVIEW Opens Graphical System Design to MATLAB

LabVIEW 8.20

National Instruments (NI; Austin, TX) released LabVIEW 8.20, the 20th anniversary edition of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform for test, control, and embedded system development. Building on its history of interconnectivity with third-party hardware and software, LabVIEW 8.20 extends the LabVIEW graphical dataflow language with native support for text-based math with MathScript. LabVIEW 8.20 also is said to bring improvements in control design and simulation performance and accelerates development of real-time system prototypes using standard PCs, FPGAs, or custom designs.

Readers' Choice Winner

Using MathScript, you can integrate your MATLAB M-files or create new scripts with LabVIEW and mix and match graphical and text-based approaches to meet application needs or prototype systems. By combining the interactive front-panel GUIs and connectivity to real-world I/O from LabVIEW with algorithms designed in traditional text-based math languages, engineers can quickly explore, prototype, iterate, and complete their designs. Algorithms from other mathematics packages, including Maple and Mathcad, can also be incorporated.

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LabVIEW 8.20 from National Instruments received the most votes in our October 2006 issue. Vote for your favorite from this issue by clicking here.