Hey Chris,
Just guessing from the content of your question I see a chance that you are a student (maybe Mechanical Engineering?). In that case your University could have an Academic Site License from NI, which means that you could have access to the self-paced online training from NI (maybe even courses given on your campus): http://ni.com/self-paced-training . If so, have a look at LabVIEW Core 1 and Core 2. I did the same and it was super-useful for me!
Ingo – LabVIEW 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, NXG 2.0, 2.1, 3.0