LabVIEW

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

I need a TDMS file viewer

I need a  viewer for viewing waveforms stored in TDMS format without running a single labview VI.

 

The labview VI is simply too unfriendly to use.

 

Is there such a software around ? Please advise

 

0 Kudos
Message 1 of 30
(12,715 Views)

There is a TDMS plug-in that allows acces to TDMS files from Excel.

 

"Look Ma! NO VIs!"

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
0 Kudos
Message 2 of 30
(12,708 Views)

Thanks Ben. 

 

I am aware of this plug-in but i need to zoom in/out of the waveforms. I believe Excel does not have this feature in their charts. 

 

Also, Excel takes ages to read in my files and takes ages to process them. There is also a 65K line limit for the 32 bit version of excel.

 

I need to be able quickly view the waveforms inside my TDMS files, perform zoom in/out and also be able to export any waveform as a graphic file. My engineers created the TDMS files in the field but i need to view them without using a bit of Labview.

 

Why did NI create such a  file format without even providing a proper file viewer for free ?

0 Kudos
Message 3 of 30
(12,703 Views)

Those requirements are to specialized for a generic reader.

 

You have a number of options that include;

 

1) Start with the TDMS file viewer, hack it to spit the file format you want.

 

2) Write a converter to convert from TDMS to a "good" format for you.

 

3) Mod the code that spits out the TDMS to write a "proper" formatted file.

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
0 Kudos
Message 4 of 30
(12,700 Views)

Google search " TDMS Viewer"...  The first link is a free TDMS Viewer from DMC.  Further links teach you how to modify NIs Viewer to suit your needs.

 

It would be nice if NI provided one.  I'm sure it would help to further establish the fomat.  You could post the idea at the NI IDEA EXCHANGE.

LabVIEW Pro Dev & Measurement Studio Pro (VS Pro) 2019 - Unfortunately now moving back to C#, .NET, Python due to forced change to subscription model by NI. 8^{
0 Kudos
Message 5 of 30
(12,693 Views)

KNA,

 

The free viewer VI seems like it has all the features you have asked for (load, select specific waveform, zoom, export to image), is there something specific that makes it "unfriendly"?  Is there something we could modify to make it better?

 

If you spend a lot of time working with large TDMS (or any other data) files I would encourage you to take a look at DIAdem.  DIAdem is a powerful data management and offline analysis tool that uses TDMS as it's native file format.

 

Regards,

 

Simon

Message 6 of 30
(12,686 Views)

One option is to buy DIADem. It isn't cheap but well worth it's value.

 

Ton 

Free Code Capture Tool! Version 2.1.3 with comments, web-upload, back-save and snippets!
Nederlandse LabVIEW user groep www.lvug.nl
My LabVIEW Ideas

LabVIEW, programming like it should be!
0 Kudos
Message 7 of 30
(12,680 Views)

Hi KNA,

 

The TDM Excel Addin that Ben mentioned installs with LabVIEW, so you should have it already.  Just double-click on the TDMS file to load it in Excel.  Better yet, have you ever tried NI's DIAdem software, which is our interactive evaluation environment for TDMS data files?

 

www.ni.com/diadem

 

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer

National Instruments

0 Kudos
Message 8 of 30
(12,670 Views)

Should I fight this suggestion of Diadem?

 

"If you can't beat them join them."

 

When you are ready to purchase a seat license for Diadem send me a private message and I'll get you hooked up with my sales people.

 

Mwahahaha.

 

Smiley Wink

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
0 Kudos
Message 9 of 30
(12,667 Views)

i have just tried the TDMS viewer from TMC. There is a major limitation. 

 

I can only view the first 2s of data.

 

i have also installed the evaluation of diadem. It is better but the user interface is a disappointment. Why do i have to go through so many steps to view the waveforms ?

 

It will be good to have a kind of waveform viewing interface similar to that of the  SPICE simulator waveform viewers. I come from an Analog IC design background and see the similarity between this TDMS file format and the many file formats such as Hspice .tr0 as well as spectre .psf format.

0 Kudos
Message 10 of 30
(12,642 Views)