Is there any utility in LabVIEW or LabVIEW add-on that does scheduling of tasks?

[VipersView]

I am trying to use LabVIEW to automate a process using various instruments. I need some utility that does the scheduling of tasks for me.

[mikeporter]

There is a test executive add-on that performs task scheduling, but it isn't really hard to write one yourself. What exactly are you trying to do?

Mike...

[VipersView]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response. Lets say there is a raw material (A) that has to go through a fixed sequence of steps on various instruments (instrument 1 can be cleaning, instrument 2 testing,...) before being shipped. Multiple identical raw materials like "A" has to go through the system in the same sequence of steps as soon as the respective instrument becomes available. I need to schedule the optimal triggering of these parallel tasks as some tasks are very time critical. Right now I am using multithreaded VI's, semaphores, etc... to achieve this. I was wondering if there was some tool that minimizes code re-write in some way that I just have to drag and drop the steps that need to happen, and the code would do the optimization for me.

thanks

Vipin

[Jason F.]

Hi VipersView,

What you are looking for is TestStand, which is the successor to the LabView TestExecutive toolkit. It is much easier to use and yet much more robust at the same time. You can create your test steps in virtually any language, including LabView G, C, C++, VB, Delphi, and so on. It also provides the ability to run tests on UUTs in parallel and as batches, while at the same time synchronizing the use of shared resources. TestStand is excellent for modularizing your automated test process and creating full test procedures that are adaptive and reusable.

Here is the product page for TestStand, I highly recommend downloading the demo and looking at the tutorials and manuals for more info.:

http://www.ni.com/teststand

Jason F.
Application
s Engineer
National Instruments
www.ni.com/ask