LabVIEW NXG is the future of LabVIEW

NI Unveils the Next Generation of LabVIEW, LabVIEW NXG 1.0, the first release of the next generation of LabVIEW engineering system design software. LabVIEW NXG bridges the gap between configuration-based software and custom programming languages with an innovative new approach to measurement automation that empowers domain experts to focus on what matters most – the problem, not the tool.Avichal Kulshrestha of National Instruments India shares more about this product in this interaction with Electronics Maker.

1. Tell us more about your recently unveiled LabVIEW NXG.

   LabVIEW NXG is the next generation of LabVIEW. With the initial 1.0 release, you can minimize time to measurement with NI data acquisition devices or third-party benchtop instruments. LabVIEW NXG offers engineering workflows for interactively acquiring, analyzing, and visualizing data sets. Combined with built-in, drag-and-drop engineering user interface development and inherent data exploration, LabVIEW NXG is the ideal tool to turn data collection into real insights. The LabVIEW NXG experience includes in-product learning to help you get your next project done, and example programs you can use as a starting point to customize your own test and measurement system.

2. What is the idea behind?

   LabVIEW was initially released as a way for non-programmers to easily develop test and measurement applications. As system complexity grew LabVIEW has grown to incorporate more and more programming paradigms. With LabVIEW NXG we want to once again make measurements more accessible to our users with instant insights and optional programming. A streamlined workflow for interactively taking measurements and interactively exploring the data. At the same time, we also wanted to incorporate latest back end technologies to enable easier upgrades to our LabVIEW platform making it always up to date for the latest needs of the market.

3. How will you compare LabVIEW with LabVIEW NXG?

   Enabling our users to effectively maintain their software applications over time is a core principle of ours. LabVIEW NXG is the future of LabVIEW, but the present is the unique combination of both LabVIEW NXG and LabVIEW 2017. Out of the gate, the LabVIEW NXG 1.0 is not yet complete enough for our entire user base to adopt. But, what LabVIEW NXG does, it does better than LabVIEW 2017. Even if LabVIEW NXG were complete enough for our entire user base, they would need an elongated timeframe to determine the most appropriate time to move their developed code base over into a “new LabVIEW.” Our research into other vendors who have executed this scale of a platform migration showed that the most common point of failure was that they forced the users to upgrade. We’re committed to empowering our users to make that decision based on their considerations: project timelines, infrastructure upgrades, and the evolving needs of the system. We have, and will, continue to invest in the current versions of LabVIEW to ensure our users can choose for themselves. A complete comparison of both tools is available here: http://www.ni.com/en-in/shop/labview/compare-labview-nxg-and-labview.html

4. What key advantages and features and new capabilities it offers?

   LabVIEW NXG gets you to your engineering insight faster with instant hardware discovery, integrated data analysis, and interactive data exploration tools. Some of the key advantages of LabVIEW NXG are:

   1. Intuitive Engineering Workflows – Optimized workflows to minimize time to first measurement using hardware auto-discovery and interactive panels to acquire and visualize data sets – no programming required.
   2. Iterative Data Exploration – Integrated exploration tools for rapid data capture and analysis to understand real-world signals
   3. Productive System Customization – Customize your test and measurement systems with graphical programming and drag-and-drop UI creation in an editor focused on reducing the development time for common tasks
   4. Interactive Learning and Help Content – Learn what is needed to build your project at-hand through included, interactive lessons and associated example programs
   5. More capable UI capabilities – A more modern set of built-in UI components built on an extensible framework makes building engineering UIs better. Import third-party controls or customize the built-in objects using skins.

5. How it will increase the productivity and what extent?

   1. LabVIEW NXG development software minimizes time to measurement with DAQ devices and benchtop instruments through engineering workflows for interactively acquiring and visualizing data sets—programming optional.
   2. Combined with built-in, drag-and-drop engineering user interface development and inherent data exploration, LabVIEW NXG is the ideal tool to turn data collection into real insights.
   3. The LabVIEW NXG experience includes learning at multiple levels to help you quickly acclimate to the topics you need to learn to get your next project done. Then when needed, using the same hardware and analysis configurations, you can rapidly transition to customize your test and measurement system with a native development environment tailored to your specific needs.

6. What key areas it targets?

LabVIEW NXG 1.0 is tailored to engineers and scientists performing benchtop measurements. This is a broad set of needs across several industries including benchtop V&V, white goods testing, and medical research, and product R&D. By internal nomenclature, we’re targeting our “DAQ” and “Instrument Control” prospects.  LabVIEW NXG 1.0 will support benchtop instruments and a significant subset of NI data acquisition hardware products – including CompactDAQ (USB, Ethernet, WiFi), other USB-based DAQ products on Windows, PCI/PCIe and PXI/PXIe DAQ boards and modules.

7. What is the outlook on future advancements?

You can find an elaborate roadmap at ni.com/labview-roadmap. To put it simply, you can expect each new release of LabVIEW NXG to continually ramp in both language support and hardware coverage relative to the current version of LabVIEW. However, there will be a combination of providing the same capability, but in an innovating new way or introducing new capabilities for managing distributed systems and developing web-hosted engineering user interfaces to connect to existing deployed systems. To make it even better for our LabVIEW NXG explorers we have introduced a technology preview program [http://www.ni.com/en-in/support/software-technology-preview.html] where they can get access to a pre-release beta version of LabVIEW NXG 2.0 and learn how LabVIEW NXG will evolve to solve more system design challenges for them.