Documentation on a Labview VI

[jakers]

Hello,

 I am trying to do some documentation/background on the VI I created. I created a VI which controls a hot water bath by use of a Sin wave and monitors the Air inflow of mass flow controllers. I am about to leave my current lab job (working at a university) and now have given the task to document my information. 

I am now wondering "exactly" how much I should document.  The person that will end up using my code to go on and build off of it to automate a few more thinks (lights, pumps, etc.) will probably have NO labview experience.  So....I have attached my VI and was wondering how I can be more helpful to a new Labview User (It does not have to be perfect, I just need to get my point across).

Questions/Problems

1. I am having trouble describing what happens in section 3. in the yellow labview notes...

2. I need to accomplish my task quickly....I am leaving the country soon.

Your Help is much appreciated

Jakers

P.S.

I learned labview on my own and the block diagram is not the greatest. I believe the next person will take some of the parts and build off of it.

[billko]

No attachment, probably due to browser issue.

[jakers]

sorry about that!

Here it is

[jakers]

Dear Bill,

Did that work?

Jack

[billko]

I think you did a good job of documenting, actually!

[jakers]

Oh really!

Thank you!

Part 3... should that be explained in more detail?

jakers

[billko]

I really can't see how you could get more detailed than that.  I think I can understand everything that goes on in the VI and I have no background on what it is you are doing!

[jakers]

Well thank you! I really appreciate it.

The only thing is that I have to give this to someone who knows nothing about labVIEW.....

And will probably be an undergraduate in college.

Should I walk through with him/her what everything does? Or should I just tell him/her How it works?

This person will have to read through a word document that I have created...

jakers

[billko]

It is possible to integrate an actual help file with LabVIEW, but I think what you have is enough.  Ideally, you'd like to document for someone who knows nothing about what you are doing, but you have to make a tradeoff and just document with "reasonable" expectations.  For instance, in my exe build documentation, I assume that if someone is attempting to build the executable, they have some knowledge of Windows, so I won't document how to drag a file from one folder to another, or how to rename a file.  The assumption is that if the user doesn't know these basics, they have no business trying to build the executable.  😉

Maybe what you can do is include links in your Word doc for LabVIEW-related stuff - like a link to this forum, for instance - plus maybe links to some LabVIEW tutorials.

[joaopam · Accepted solution]

Do you want to make the person understand the logic of the program?

I mean, which function does which task, and etc?

I've already used flowcharts to do that. To illustrate, use LV blocks to demonstrate what's happening everywhere.

But your documentation is good, though. Just as Bill, I have no background on what the app works, and I could understand it easily.

Nice job.