[Alan Anderson]

If you want to be able to run a motor so that a mechanism moves to a desired location, you will need to have some way of measuring the mechanism's location. Depending on the details of the mechanism, it can be easy in LabVIEW to control a motor based on sensor values.

If there's a pivot point for something that moves along with the "cable connected to the winch", you can use a potentiometer or other absolute angle sensor as feedback to the roboRIO. If there's a limited range of linear travel, you can use a "string pot". You can use a rotary encoder to measure the number of degrees the winch has turned, and if you can ensure that you always know where the winch starts, that will let you know where it is at all times.