jaredk

Hello all, I am not very active on the community here (though I'd like to change that), and just recently took the CLA after reading many of the posts on here. I found them incredibly helpful when preparing for the exam. I passed---and am now officially a CLA---but just barely. I scored 70/100---the minimum passing score. I had taken the practice CLA exam provided by NI, and carefully reviewed the provided practice exam solution. Though I didn't particularly like the sample solution, it was simple and possible to implement within 4 hours. During the exam, I used nearly the exact same architecture and felt that I completed more of anything you could think of than the sample solution did: I had more documentation, met more requirements, designed more "modules", etc. Either there is something I fundamentally don't understand about how my solution was different than the sample solution, or the sample solution would be a marginal pass (or a failure). My scoring breakdown was very similar to Daklu's: Style: 10/10 Documentation: 16/20 (Architecture/modules not documented adequately for developer to implement/complete functionality.) Req Coverage: 18/30 (Percentage of requirements covered = 60%.) Arch Development: 26/40 (Some "modules" not designed, others not clearly identified or modularized, hardware abstraction insufficient) I'm not sure what advice to give those yet to take (or re-take) the exam. If you passed the CLD, you will probably be fine on style. Don't lose points there. Provide sufficient documentation for how to finish what you started; I probably spent too much time implementing code rather than documenting how to finish implementation. Inevitably, there will be requirements that you think you have covered that you do not cover sufficiently by the standards of the graders, and you will lose points. Apparently I covered 60% of the requirements, though I recall writing [Covers: xxx] for nearly all of them (I guess the graders did not think the requirements were adequately met). It is really easy to get knocked on points for architecture development if you spend too much time implementing code. Design the architecture and document how to fill in the details. Filling in the details yourself (except for critical pieces of the architecture) is not worth the time expenditure... (the only category it might help is "requirements coverage", which can be covered sufficiently with documentation... in other words, good documentation can get you points on both "documentation" and "requirements coverage"). Best of luck to anyone who is trying to pass the CLA. If you are not prepared, you will not pass. If you are prepared and experienced, you might pass; success seems to be very hit-or-miss. Jared Kirschner | Electrical and Computer Engineer | Certified LabVIEW Architect | www.jaredkirschner.com

The CLAD Workshops are hosted at universities which have a LabVIEW Student Ambassador during academic semesters. As such, these workshops will not be relevant to you (as you are taking the exam really soon). Many of the workshop groups have publicly-available resources online, though. Hopefully the resources I linked you to will be sufficient.

Hello, I have worked as a National Instruments LabVIEW Student Ambassador (LSA). One of the goals of the LSAs is to prepare students at universities to pass the CLAD. As a result, I am familiar with some of the more recent versions of the CLAD exam. You might find some useful resources here. The CLAD exam will ask a few simple questions on a very wide range of topics (see study guide found at link above). Many of the questions do involve looking at code and determining the correct output (often testing your understanding of loops, execution order, etc.) Other questions test your knowledge of specific LabVIEW features and functionality (e.g. queues, notifiers, semaphores). A book might be a useful reference, but isn't necessarily the best thing for CLAD preparation. You should be able to find most of the information you need to pass the CLAD online (and freely available). I strongly recommend taking one of the 2 released CLAD practice exams to see how well-prepared that you are already. Note that the 2 practice exams may be a bit outdated. Because of this, you might want to build in a buffer to evaluating your performance on the practice exams. If you can score >85% on the practice exams, you are probably fine. If you are below 85% on the practice exams, you might need more preparation. There will inevitably be questions you cannot answer, and it will have nothing to do with your ability to use LabVIEW. What matters is that you get at least a 70%. Please take a practice exam and read the CLAD study guide at the link above before you decide what to do next. Best of luck.

I just took the CLA today for the first time; as such, I can't say whether or not the exam is now more difficult. However, I can say that, at least at my testing site, LabVIEW 2012 was being used. I'd recommend being prepared to work without the built-in message queues of LabVIEW 2012, just in case.