LabVIEW Quick Start, a short guide to get you up and running with LabVIEW.
Getting Started with LabVIEW Virtual Instruments, a tutorial from NI that goes through a simple exercise that does not require hardware. This is one of four tutorial documents from NI. If you want to try the exercises in the other three documents, download from this link
Connecting the USB-6008, which describes how to connect the USB-6008 data acquisition unit to your computer.
Measuring Temperature with a Thermistor, which describes how to create a virtual instrument that collects temperature data using a thermistor sensor.
A LabVIEW Student Edition is available for purchase for $79.95 (10/2009 price, see www.ni.com/labviewse/select.htm for details).
Mechanical Engineering students at the University of Minnesota have the option of purchasing the LabVIEW Student Edition for $50 through the University of Minnesota, with lifetime updates. See the ME4031 Measurements Lab course Teaching Assistant for details.
The LabVIEW 30-Day Trial site is www.ni.com/trylabview/.
The Windows trial version download (755 Mb) is at https://lumen.ni.com/nicif/us/lveval/content.xhtml
The Mac OS X trial version download (533 Mb) is at https://lumen.ni.com/nicif/us/evallvmac/content.xhtml
To connect hardware to LabVIEW, the NI-DAQmx drivers are needed:
The Windows (XP and Vista) NI-DAQmx driver (1278 Mb) is at http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1384
The Mac OS X NI-DAQmx driver (257 Mb) is at http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1341
For other OS versions look here
Note: For a Windows VISTA machine on a WiFi connection, the LabVIEW download took about 30 minutes and the NI-DAQmx driver download took about 50 minutes. Following download, it took about 15 minutes for the install. Download and install LabVIEW before downloading and installing the drivers.
In ME2011, the National Instrument USB-6008 is used for data collection. The device connects to a host computer through a USB port. The equipment was acquired for use in ME2011 through a generous donation by National Instruments to the University of Minnesota.