Eager newbie

[Jon Scott]

Starting from absolutely nothing, would any of you care to suggest the
*best* way to start learing LabView? I would like to get up to speed and
start using this program so that three months from now I'll have a real
world project up and operating.

I know there's no substitute for good teaching materials, and I don't
want to waste my time with bad ones. Too many software manuals are
written by people with a firm understanding of the material but
absolutely no understanding of how to teach. (Hence the popularity of
the Dummies books, which of course vary widely in quality.)

I'm open to any suggestions and approaches.

Thanks,
Jon

[Evan]

I am a little biased but I honestly think there is nothing better than the NI LabVIEW Basics 1 & 2 courses.  It is a 1 week course and you will leave that class able to do a lot more than you expected, and you will have a chance to work with an NI engineer and to create a project that interacts with HW.

Then after you have gotten your feet wet in LabVIEW I would strongly recommend the intermediate courses.  They are also great classes.

LabVIEW is an easy language to get something up and running fast, however that sometimes leads new programmers to create "interesting" code.  The courses will teach you how to create good code and are well worth the money.

[SteelStonehenge]

I'd start going through the Examples.  Just start with the simple ones, and tear them apart so you know what every function does.  Also, try out EVERY function on the pop-up menus as you place a part.  It's amazing what you'll find there!  I've been "playing" with Labview since 1994 and I still find new, useful functions.

By the way, as an extra encouragement, Labview was the first computer program I ever used.  I'd never touched a computer before, and within a week I was writing data acquisition VI's.  I don't think there's another application on the planet where you can learn so much so fast.

eric

[Joe_H]

Buy the book called Labview for everyone third edition it is the best book for learning LabView by far. I even think it is better than those books that you get from the courses that NI gives. You can buy it on amazon.com. Trust me you will not go wrong by buying this book. I learned LV from their second edition and the third has been updated for LV 8.

I went through the second edition and by the time I got done with it I had a fully functional working project. Then I decided to take some NI courses and found that I had already done everything up to the advanced courses.

Just my 2 cents