How do I write data to a file without prompting the user for a file location?

[theghost]

Greetings,

I am new to labView and do not have very much experience.  I am trying to write a VI that collects data and writes it to a file.  I run the VI and get a window that asks where I would like to save the file and what to name it.  After specifying a name and location and allowing the VI to complete I open the file that I just wrote.  The problem is that there is a jump in the data, it will give the data collect on the first iteration of the VI but then there will be a jump in time and data. The jump, I am assuming, is because the VI will not collect data until after I have specified the name and location of the file I am writing to.  How can I set up the VI so that there is no jump in data collection?  I have attached a file with some sample data that I collected.  The 'jump' is circled in red.

Thanks in advance!

[MoReese]

Try this.  By naming the file before hand using a file path control (or a constant on the block diagram), it will write to the file without prompting.

[chuggins143]

What are you doing with the data once you've collected it?  Pulling it into Excel?

C

[theghost]

I am storing it on a USB drive so that I can access it on other programs such as matlab.

[chuggins143]

Looks like your data is just a tab delimited text file?  Are you just manually starting and stopping the daq process or are you dialing into a set of parameters and taking a specified number of points or what?

[theghost]

Yes, my data is a tab delimited text file.  The VI is set up to collect a specified number of points and then stop running.

[MoReese]

Have you tried what I recommended?  Are you still having issues or is the problem resolved?  If not, post your VI.

[theghost]

Thank you all for you comments and suggestions.  I believe I have discovered the problem.  I had originally had the write to measurement VI inside of a loop that did not stop until a button was pressed.  Doing things that way LabVIEW needed to decide when to write the data to a file and it chose to do it after the first x number of samples, which was specified.  The was I have it now is that there is not an 'infinite' loop and the program stops after a set number of samples is recorded.  This way LabVIEW records all the data and then asks me where I want it write the data.

Thanks again for all the input!