CLAD Exam Experiences

[SercoSteveB]

As at least a couple of 'The Daily CLAD' regulars have now sat the NI Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer exam,  I thought I would create this post so that people can comment on their experiences.

Some things which I would like to know are listed below, but please feel free to comment with anything you feel is relevant:

1. Comment on their experiences
2. Views on the exam
3. Exam format (40 questions in 1 hour, PC or Paper based etc.)
4. Future topics to cover in 'The Daily CLAD'

CLAD 2017 Preparation Resources

CLAD Preparation Guide using LabVIEW 2017

LabVIEW and DAQ evaluation resource from mon3am

Training Links from Hooovahh via the Unofficial Forum Rules and Guidelines document

Hardware Basics

LabVEW Basics

DAQ Application Tutorials

3 Hour LabVIEW Introduction

CLD Preparation Resources

Study Guide and Sample Exams

Following the update to the CLAD Exam in July 2017 the links below are no longer available.

An excellent collation of the CLAD Preparation material available from NI.

Check out the Sample CLAD exams on ni.com; the Answer Sheet, at the end, includes links to information relating to each question, which is really cool (no link to 'The Daily CLAD' though....not so cool).

http://download.ni.com/pub/devzone/epd/clad_sample_exam1.pdf

http://ftp.ni.com/pub/devzone/epd/clad_sample_exam2.pdf

Lots of resources here from Jarda

More resources here from HuiRu

[GladysToMeetYou]

Just took (and passed) the CLAD exam today. Besides Core 1 and Core 2, there are a few things I'd recommend:

• Ask questions on the LabVIEW forums and actively participate in the discussions. These guys are really smart. Use their knowledge to your advantage.
• I found SixClear to be a really useful source. They have some courses you can take, but even watching their free videos on Youtube is extremely helpful.
• Read the questions slowly. I can not emphasize this enough. A lot of the time, you can eliminate answers that clearly don't make sense. Time management was a big issue for me because answering 40 questions in 60 minutes is not easy to do.
• Answer the questions on the Prep Guide and really try to get a feel for what they want you to understand. A lot of these same concepts appear throughout the exam. Understand how subtle changes make big changes in the results.
• Be able to recognize common functions and default behavior of functions/data types.
• Probably the most useful resource I found was the Daily CLAD. A lot of the questions (especially the older ones) aren't necessarily the types of questions you'll find on the newest version of the CLAD, but they really help teach you how to think in LabVIEW. Thanks for all the work you put into it Steve!

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations GladysToMeetYou, nice one.

[DavidJSzwer]

"Read the questions carefully" is definitely good advice.  The CLAD is fond of showing you large chunks of block-diagram, and asking which of them is best at some particular task.  These can go to either of two extremes:

• Questions where there is a single "item" on the correct choice, that all the others lack.  Once you spot this, the question is quick and easy.  For example (not actually in the exam, I just made it up), the question may demand that the task repeats until an error occurs, and only one of the solutions wires an error into the "stop" terminal of the loop.
• Questions where every single wrong answer is wrong in a different way.  These can take a long time, because you have to study every detail of every option carefully.  If you have trouble with time, you might want to mark these and leave them to last.

One more thing I noticed:  I don't think any of the example code is actually broken.  I often found myself thinking that an option was wrong because the wires shouldn't connect properly; closer inspection revealed different issues.  In other words, I don't think they give code that would show broken wires or start buttons in the LabView editor.

Thank you to the Daily CLAD and the other links in this section!  The new-style exam *is* different from these examples, but they are still great general LabView practice.

[SercoSteveB]

Some good advise, thanks David

[Alias_GN]

Hi,

I passed CLAD LABVIEW 2017 . Since the questions have been changed, too many sources were not available. Have been coding with LABVIEW for 5 years , however the questions were harder than expected. The test questions were similar to the guide and topic list. Mostly focusing on DAQ and logging data and arrays. 3 questions were on the Get in time and time stamps that I did not study at all. About 5 questions were from the old style exam.I was following the daily CLAD post, and like the brain teaser. If you have limited time would recommend filter by arrays topic only and practice on them.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations Alias_GN, nice one.

Thanks for the advise.

[A_rid]

I'm a CLAD! I passed the exam few days ago. It was 40 questions computer based so I inmediately got the result. I studied on my own in order to sit the exam. The thing that i can say is that the Daily Clad is a great instrument to prepare yourself but obviously before you have to know at least some basic concepts like loops and some common functions. So lets say that i studied the theory part on the books or through the Help of Labview which is very detailed. After an initial period i started to build little VIs just to become more practical and simulaneously i started following the Daily Clad. For me the best thing that can be done is to try to guess the answers,ask for clarifications and build yourself those snippet of VI and change them and try again to guess what they do. Another important thing for me during the exam was not to look inmediately to the answers, first i tried to obtain the result on my own in order not to be influenced bo the multiple choice, if i couldn't work out any result then i tried to state in my mind some properties that the correct answer had to require for example the numbers of elements and so on. For the topics to know i followed the prep guide. In this way I had no surprises at the exam. Hope this can help someone else who is preparing the CLAD. Have a nice day guys! 😉

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations A_rid, nice one.  

Thanks for the hints and tips.

[kiranteja93]

hi all,

as we know in this July the CLAD exam pattern changed. last Thursday(30-11-2017) i had my first attempt on CLAD2017. But i could not get through it. actually i prepared for the exam based on the previous question papers. in the previous question papers the way of solving questions is little bit easy when comparing with CLAD2017 question paper.

the question given in CLAD2017 are more tricky and little tough. Most of the questions are based on the DAQ programming, State machine, Parallel loops and file I/o's etc., we have to prepare more consciously and in more different ways we ever known. 

all the above time management is most important thing. once you started the exam you have to verify every multiple choice given for every question in both ways, like the statement or snippet or data or anything, and you have to verify all choices from left to right and top to bottom. otherwise you can not go to the next question. if you want to check any previous question after answered it you have to complete all 40 questions then you can re verify the question paper from 1st question to last question.you can not skip any question. so be careful when you are writing the exam.

 this is my eperience when i had my CLAD Exam. so i think it is helpful for other CLAD aspirant. thank you each and all.

[SercoSteveB]

Unlucky kiranteja93, that's a shame and thank you for your candor.  You are not alone, most people are reporting that the CLAD2017 is tougher than the old style CLAD.  

I would say that having a tougher CLAD is a good thing.  It is a recognised certification within our industry that would be devalued somewhat if the exam was too easy.  Obviously at the other end of the scale making it overly hard has an impact on take-up.  The other steps in the certification triangle (CLD, CLED and CLA) leave plenty of scope for making things hard anyway.  I expect NI are looking at the pass/fail rate for the CLAD2017, comparing it against that for the CLAD, and have a plan to adjust the complexity to find the sweet spot between easy and hard.

Steve

[crossrulz]

NI wants the CLAD to mean something.  Before, almost anybody could come off the street and pass the CLAD.  But that did not mean they could make solutions.  This was the driving force behind the new CLAD: it should show that somebody can make/understand a solution instead of knowing basic LabVIEW trivia.  DAQmx, State Machines, and Producer/Consumers are the basis of most solutions out there, even the large applications.  So if you are saying you can make solutions, you had better know these.  The new CLAD reflects this.

[Muri777]

I would just suggest having proper answers would help people understand better. It seems like such a simple thing. You don't see university grade exams with just the answers on the solution paper because students would never learn from their mistakes, this is why they justify their answers.

Create answers similar to the previous CLAD.

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[hemasagar]

Hello every one today i had written clad togay and got 26 Questions correct i.e 65% failed, new pattern is some what tricky and bit difficult that previous sample papers, questions seems to be like 2017 preparation guide.... 

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[kiranteja93]

Thank you so much for your valuable suggestions Steve and Crossrulz,.

[hemasagar]

 i have got 65% in clad today ,some are saying that i can have second chance for the first payment itself please give me clear idea about it

[SercoSteveB]

A re-test used to be included in the exam fee, I haven't heard of NI removing it.  If you are in any doubt ask your NI representative.

[Fisel]

Hi all.  Each exam attempt will be paid for separately.  (sorry to be abrupt, thought it best to be unambiguous).  

[VSReddy]

Hi Friends,

During the exam do not go back and forth try to solve each question in 1.5 min. 

Read the questions carefully , understand the requirement and choose the best option possible. The options for the answers are very close and sometimes tricky in the exam. Preparation resources provided by NI and daily clad blog is the best source of practice. 

[AUlikyan_ANEL]

I have already passed the CLAD LV exam.

In my opinion, the code snippets in some questions were too large for quick understanding and for calculating the correct answers, which was more time consuming. I was worried that I would not have enough time to refer to all the questions.

Thank you for The Daily CLAD blog. The practice of working on the questions from daily CLAD was very helpful.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations Sunil, nice one.

Thanks for the hints

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations AUlikyan_ANEL, nice one.

That is not the first time I have heard that the time to complete a question, due to the amount you have to do, seems a bit long.

[bfabella]

Hi everyone,

I passed the CLAD exam this morning! I had 1 hour to answer 40 questions on PC. Given unlimited time, I think I could have answered each question correctly. However, given the time constraint, I found it very difficult to finish in time. There was a timer in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and I kept getting distracted by it and getting anxious when I fell behind the pace of 1.5 minutes/question. I finished with about 30 seconds to spare.

Doing and understanding all the questions in the CLAD Preparation Guide using LabVIEW 2017 was very helpful. There was more than one question on the exam that closely resembled one in the guide. I also found it helpful to do all the prep guide questions at once to time how long it took me. I did this and knew I had to speed up on exam day. Finally, the thing that helped me the most was doing 'The Daily Clad' questions and reading the resulting discussions. It really helped me to get better and faster at both reading the LabVIEW code and finding what was wrong or not as efficient with a particular multiple choice option. 

Steve, thank you very much for creating and maintaining such a a valuable resource! And also to crossrulz and all the regular contributors to the 'The Daily CLAD'!

Brian

[Issa.Smily]

Hello,

Just passed the CLAD exam!! It was a bit rough but not as hard as the Daily CLAD questions that Steve so kindly posts and maintains (Thank you so much for that!). The questions were mostly focused on Hardware section and Arrays. Honestly the best resource for preparing for the exam, as far as I found, are the Daily CLAD posts. They are super helpful! 

Thanks again Steve and everyone who helps maintain the Daily CLAD!

Issa

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations Brian, nice one!...and thanks for the marketing.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations Issa, nice one!....again thanks for the marketing.

[hemasagar]

Hello friends,today on 15th march i passed my clad exam..This daily clad blog helped me a lot in my prepation thank you @Steve  and cross rulz and other who guided me..

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations hemasagar, nice one.

How did you find the level of detail in the CLAD2017 Preparation Guide, would you like to see anything else included?

[alekhya11]

Hi I took my CLAD yesterday and cleared. I got 85% even though i was expecting more. I would say the best source of preparation for CLAD is DAILY CLAD. I would also give a suggestion to CLAD exam takers to be thorough with the preparation guide and especially DAQ related. As I was reading on the previous blogs it was mentioned that we cannot go back to the previous question until we answer the whole set of 40 questions, which is wrong. We can always go back to the previous question during the test. Answering 40 questions in 60 minutes was tough. Time has to be managed well..!, All the best for all CLAD exam takers.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations alekhya11, nice one.

How well do you think the CLAD Preparation Guide aligns with the exam?  Any suggestions for the inclusion of additional information or for the removal of information?

[Priya16]

I ve cleared my CLAD yesterday in 1st attempt itself. I am really grateful to everyone in this blog who all are really helped me to get over my doubts instantly. I would strongly recommend Preparation guide 2017. it will be really useful at the time of revision to assess ourselves whether we are covered all important concepts or not. More or less the deep knowledge of array, cluster functions & its operation would really help to get confident & too clarity for solving questions without any oscillations. Thank you all.

[SercoSteveB]

Thanks Priya16, and congrats again.

[hemasagar]

Questioning model is as the way in preparation guide and Dac mx played a major role,no need of modifications sir, practice more number of times the daily clad which help me to solve 40 questions in 1hr, time plays an important role in clad.

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@SercoSteveB

[levonsg]

Yesterday I had taken a clad exam. The questions were almost same in “The Daily CLAD” blog. i have 6 mounts experience on LabView. I've studied only the latest 2-year questions from the blog. Thank you SercoSteveB for that blog.

[SercoSteveB]

Nice one levonsg, and congratulations again.

[பரத்_குமார்(bharathkumar)]

@SercosteveB. thank you for this blog, it was helpful. cleared clad. going to prepare for teststand any blog such as this will be useful. i saw that daily CTD is not updated for a while.

Thanks ,

bharath

[ShockHouse]

Just took my CLAD today, got out about 10 minutes ago and passed! Thanks so much for taking the time to post all these Daily CLAD questions, it helped a lot.

One thing I noticed is that the test seemed a lot easier than the Daily CLAD. This helped me a lot because once I could master the Daily CLAD questions, the test seemed simple. One thing I didn't expect to see was explanations for certain functions on the CLAD test. The questions were very clear. One thing I think you do a great job of is making the answers close together, where it seems like anyone could be right. On the CLAD one thing I think can help people is eliminating answers right at the beginning.  

[anodeanna]

Just took the CLAD about an hour ago, passed with 85%. I finished with 15 min remaining so I was able to comfortably go back and review some of the more difficult problems. I first started using LabVIEW earlier this year for an undergrad design course, so I had some basic knowledge before I started studying for the CLAD. The provided CLAD2017 Preparation Guide and 'The Daily Clad' were both invaluable resources.

I definitely recommend going into LabVIEW and making VIs for every question that you can. Even if you know the answer to a question, physically doing it and then playing around with it can be very helpful.

And this is pretty inconsequential but was a tad annoying: you have to be careful where you click, because clicking anywhere near the answer choices results in an answer getting selected (as opposed to an answer being selected only when you click the little selection circle). When it comes to computer-based tests, I have a horrible habit of selecting an answer and then immediately clicking on white space. So I caught myself accidentally changing my answer a couple times. I could be alone in doing this, though, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations anodeanna, nice one.

I have taken a whole bunch of the NI computer based multiple choice examinations over the years and have not encountered the accidental selection issue you describe.  This is a good place to bring up your issues though, you may not be alone.

[garyc2]

I passed the CLAD 8 years ago with a score of 80% and little preparation.

When I took the latest version this spring, I was overconfident and failed with a score of 65% and felt rushed toward the end of the test.

Worked on my weak areas and passed on the second try with a score of 75% and 20 minutes to spare. If you practice, you can get your speed up.

Onward to preparing for the CLD. I don't ever want to take the CLAD again.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations garyc2, nice one.

The new CLAD is a step up in complexity from the old version. 

[crossrulz]

garyc2,

NI recently removed the CLAD requirement to take the CLD.  But I would argue that if you barely passed the CLAD, you will not do well on the CLD.

[SercoSteveB]

garyc2, another thing to consider is that the CLAD is designed to test a wider breadth of knowledge, whereas the CLD is more focused.   You may find the CLD fits better into your skill set.  I know for me the CLD felt much more like a normal day in the office, whereas for the CLAD I had to study the things that I wouldn't normally use everyday.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations ShockHouse, nice one and thanks for the tips.

[SercoSteveB]

Congratulations bharath1991, nice one.   Good luck with the CTD.

[Oleksiy7979]

Took my exam yesterday and failed. Got 60%. My experience is that the exam was not as hard as the Dayly CLAD. I would say that the test was almost identical to what is written in the Preparation Guide. In fact, I was thinking that the questions were too simple for me and I was surprised to see only 60%. Maybe it was because I did not complete everything in time. Ended up with 38 answered questions. Still wonder, whether it was 42 questions in total, or just 40 since I did not go through all of them. The girl at the test centre was clueless. She had hundreds of other exams and could not answer a single question about the format of CLAD.

I could not go back to the questions I have already answered. Instead, I could flag some of them to review again at the end of the exam. But it never happened because I did not have enough time.

Don't full yourself that you can slow down a bit when you have answered 24 questions during 30 minutes. You become slower at the end, therefore, you need more time.

The girl at the test center did not provide me with any paper related to the results of the test. She just said that if there is no paper coming out of her printer, I get nothing. No review, no argumentation, nothing. I even don't know which questions I have unsewered right or wrong.

Does anybody know whom I should contact if I think that one of the questions was suspiciously incorrect? Can I check whether my results were correctly calculated?

[crossrulz]

Any questions regarding the test and/or validity of answers should go to certification@ni.com.  It will be forwarded to the right person.

But Pearson Vue really knows nothing about any of the exams they proctor.  They just proctor computerized exams for a lot of different companies.  So I would expect your results when discussing the exam with the proctor.

[Oleksiy7979]

Thank you, crossrulz. I have contacted certification@ni.com. Here is their answer (I don’t post here the question itself due to NDA):

...Thank you for pointing that out, I will log it so we can be aware on the next revision of this exam.

Can you believe that? They had admitted that the test question was a crap and they will fix it. But not for me. I could not think clearly after I have met this question #22 during the exam and there was nobody to complain to. And now they thank me. Well, thank you too, NI Certification Team, for the failure during my CLAD!

[VikashKumar23]

Hi,

I took my CLAD exam yesterday. I didn't pass. I scored 55%. 22 correct answers out of 40 . Need to score 28 to pass. 

From electronics background I have got no experience in software or LabVIEW and I studied only for 2-3 weeks and 10 hours a day before taking the test.  

The daily CLAD was very helpful. After finishing the exam they showed my individual scores on each sections and I got full marks on loops section. That's because of doing a lot of practice from daily CLAD. 

Regarding the arrays and other sections I scored very less. I still need to do more practice on the arrays and bundles. 

I scored full marks on DAQ related questions as well.

It would be nice if they provide a printout of the marks that I score on individual sections as well which will help me to concentrate  more on those sections. All I got was the over all score.  

I recommend CLAD is really a good start to do your CLD and not to skip CLAD. 

Thanks to Steve and other who helped on daily CLAD blog. 

[VikashKumar23]

Hi,

On the CLAD preparation guide they have mentioned that there will be 42 question. I remember only taking 40.

[LGelmi]

Hi everyone, 

usually I lurk in the shadows of this forum, feeding of your knowledge, but today I took the CLAD test and passed it (92%) and felt like I needed to give something back. 
I can safely say that without The Daily CLAD my score would have been much lower. 
Thanks SercoSteveB (and everyone answering his riddles, actually) for that.
I'm italian. Just so you know you are helping the whole world! 🙂

My test experience

(I didn't read all previous posts, so I'll just hope I write something useful )
The test had a declared duration of 65 minutes, 5 of which were allocated to read and accept the NDA. 
The total questions were 40, which surprised me as in the guide it was declared 42. The questions were quite similar to those in the preparation guide.
I completed the test in about 45 minutes and took the remaining time to review my answers (you can flag them for review when you read them). 
I believe I found one mistake (or made a new one! :)) during the review... 
Mind that the navigation gets enabled only once you end the test, so keep the "easy" question first and the "hard" one for later, so you make sure to get to the end.

Sometimes the block diagram is just over complicated for the question and you might end up wasting about 5 minutes of your time (repeat this for about 4 question, and you end up in a quite an hurry). In those case I suggest you to try finding the single node that should be relevant for the answer, and not even looking at the rest. Flag it.
If you remain with some spare time at the end, just come back and verify there wasn't something more hidden. Otherwise, it was probably the best choice not wasting further time there anyway.
Well, that's what I did at least.

My preparation

I'm a physicist with some year experience in electronics and programming.
It's been some years since I started using LabView, even though never full time nor professionally. 
I did follow the online courses a couple of years ago and recently got the "Programming" badge.
I had something more than one week to prepare for this test.

I had the preparation guide test.
I repeated the NI online courses (Core 1 and Core 2) and rushed through their practical exercises. 
I repeated the preparation guide test.
I took all "old CLAD" example tests I could find.
I discovered the CLAD format changed (and I wasn't happy about it!).
I carefully read all Daily CLAD posts until about August 2017, so they were more focused on things actually in the test. I also read all non-test related ones (e.g. the friday bender) as they improved quite a lot my overall LabView understanding. 

I hope this helps someone 🙂