[vamfun]

I am comfortable with LV ,C/C++ and matlab. Our team chose to stay with C++ for FRC target code but since I always do engineering simulations of our control systems including the pneumatics my language preferences vary.

For engineering analysis, I usually prefer matlab but find the intended users are often unfamiliar with it or don't have matlab installed. Since most of the kids have C capability, several build seasons I used C to write the simulations and used EXCEL to do the graphing.

Recently, I've wrapped LV I/O functions around C programs to extract the utility of both languages for quick simulation. The LV graphics are powerful and the text editing of C beats the somewhat clumsy data flow editing of LV particularly when dealing with logic and simple math. The plus is that most teams have LV working now so the software is portable.

Had our team used LV, I think it would have been easy to build an autonomous mode simulator that used LV embedded target code for the control system and LV for the simulated dynamics and graphics as some teams have done.

Often times hardware availability dictates the use of LV. At the college where I mentor we had an NI DAQ board lying around so we chose to use LV to write the control system for a STM project to aid a nanotech initiative. It took longer since I had to learn LV but like Alan said when you give in to the data flow concept the work flows easier too.

If NI offered up a good cheap virtual space modeling capability I'd use LV more for sure. Maybe they will include more graphics and virtual capability in next year's kit.