LabVIEW 8.5 Released

[Michael Aivaliotis]

NI Announces LabVIEW 8.5.

Download it here.

I figured this would happen by NIWeek. Here's a LAVA thread discussion on it.

Now I will have to wait about a year or so to actually use it on a real project since it takes most of my customers that long to upgrade. Even then, it's a tough sell. This is normal. That's ok, I can always create my own goodies with it.

[i2dx]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ Aug 3 2007, 11:00 PM)

Now I will have to wait about a year or so to actually use it on a real project since it takes most of my customers that long to upgrade. Even then, it's a tough sell. This is normal. That's ok, I can always create my own goodies with it.

lol, the same with me. I started my first LV 8.2 project in April this year. I have just finished to upgrade my largest project to LV 8.2.1 from 7.1.1 and now ... we have 8.5. puh, it seems, I have to work a little bit faster to catch up with the prodictivity of NI R&D

Not to forget, I just rewrote my Tool Chain a few weeks ago for LV 8.2.1 ...

[Val Brown]

QUOTE(i2dx @ Aug 3 2007, 11:29 PM)

lol, the same with me. I started my first LV 8.2 project in April this year. I have just finished to upgrade my largest project to LV 8.2.1 from 7.1.1 and now ... we have 8.5. puh, it seems, I have to work a little bit faster to catch up with the prodictivity of NI R&D

Not to forget, I just rewrote my Tool Chain a few weeks ago for LV 8.2.1 ...

OTOH as a single developer working primarily on my own deployed product, I expect to be up and running in 8.5 as my IDE by the end of NI Week. Perhaps even sooner... ;-)

[orko]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ Aug 3 2007, 02:00 PM)

NI Announces LabVIEW 8.5.

Download it .

Also, make sure to check out the latest DAQmx and NI-488 device drivers.

[Val Brown]

QUOTE(Val Brown @ Aug 4 2007, 11:11 AM)

OTOH as a single developer working primarily on my own deployed product, I expect to be up and running in 8.5 as my IDE by the end of NI Week. Perhaps even sooner... ;-)

OK so here's a follow up note -- in a few hours the actual (ie non-Alliance members part of) NI week begins and I have already transitioned my 8.2.1 project to LV 8.5. It was an interesting process -- which gave me a great introduction to the "Resolve Conflicts" feature of the new Project interface deployed in 8.5. That was a bit of a ride since my project is over 1400 VIs and spans several different folders on my development system but, I must say, the built in process did work, and worked well, in resolving all of the conflicts that arose during the transition.

If that process works well with as complex -- and problematic! -- as my Project was, I can only assume it will be a much needed and much valued tool for those with less challenging migrations.

The other issue that was interesting concerned the Database Connectivity Toolkit (DCT). It kept on throwing errors re: the DB Variant to Data functions. It took a bit of detective work but here's the fix for this (at least it's something that I found that worked). It's probably not at all "official" but it did work for me FWIW.

There is a new folder in the 8.5 installation:

<labview path>\vi.lib\addons\_DB Variant To Data in prior iterations of the DCT there was a similarly named folder in: <labview path>\vi.lib\addons\database -- so <labview path>\vi.lib\addons\database\_DB Variant To Data This earlier folder needed to be zipped -- so it could no longer be found by LV (8.5) when it loaded. After zipping that folder my DCT functions loaded and compiled without problem. Prior to zipping up the older _DB Variant To Data folder loading DCT function generated an error in LV 8.5 around the DB Variant to Data functions. I suspect that as the release matures there will be a more "natural" way to transition 8.2.1 DCT-related functions -- perhaps a reinstall of the DCT or???? But the procedure I've just described worked and I'm now happily exploring 8.5 with a legacy project. So far so good and so far so cool! There are lots of really great features. :thumbup:

[Aristos Queue]

QUOTE(Val Brown @ Aug 7 2007, 03:12 AM)

already transitioned my 8.2.1 project to LV 8.5. It was an interesting process -- which gave me a great introduction to the "Resolve Conflicts" feature of the new Project interface deployed in 8.5.

Just to be clear to everyone... if you haven't used LV8.5, you might get the impression from this post that there's some sort of great Migration Phase to transition from 8.2 to 8.5. There isn't. But LV8.5 has strengthened the ability of the project to make sure that you're loading the VIs you intend to be loading -- an attempt to fix the ancient curse of Cross Linked VIs. It works pretty well, but when you first load your project in 8.5, if you've got lots of VIs on your disk that are the same file name and multiple of them are referenced from within your project, the project now has a series of tools, including "Resolve Conflicts dialog", to give you tight control over exactly which ones should be part of the project and associated with what caller VIs.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

QUOTE(Aristos Queue @ Aug 7 2007, 09:39 AM)

...Resolve Conflicts dialog", to give you tight control over exactly which ones should be part of the project and associated with what caller VIs.

A big "ata-boy" to whoever got that in place. It made avery good first impression on me.

Ben

[Val Brown]

QUOTE(Ben @ Aug 7 2007, 06:44 AM)

A big "ata-boy" to whoever got that in place. It made avery good first impression on me.

Ben

Absolutely -- it's a really cool, intuitive and easy to use feature.

[Aristos Queue]

QUOTE(Val Brown @ Aug 7 2007, 10:25 AM)

Absolutely -- it's a really cool, intuitive and easy to use feature.

Caveat: It works great for pure VI projects. It has issues when libraries (.lvlib, .xctl, .lvclass or .lvsc) get involved. It can identify the conflicts, but the untangling is much more manual. The tools will become more robust as time goes by.

PS: .lvsc is the new file extension for the LV State Charts, introduced in this morning's keynotes. Some folks would also include .xnode in the list, but I don't include imaginary files in my list. :-)

[orko]

QUOTE(Michael_Aivaliotis @ Aug 3 2007, 02:00 PM)

NI Announces LabVIEW 8.5.

FYI, VIPM 1.0 does not (will not) support LabVIEW 8.5. See here for more info.

[Yair]

Here's one feature which wasn't really discussed and I only remembered about it today -

Remember Jim's reply #2 in this thread?

Well, it can actually be done in 8.5 - you can use a feedback node without a loop. This would make LV2 globals (at least the loop part) a thing of the past!

[Jacemdom]

Salut.

LV 8.5 personnal favorite

It is possible to create a project of an entire code repositery (librairies and projects) and simply click view caller and subvis on an item to see where it is used and what it uses. Combine with the auto-update folder option, it is possible to open that project to see what will be the repercussion of a change.

:thumbup: