LabView for the mac?

[haye321]

Right now I am sitting in my hotel room in Atlanta and I have just seen LabView today in a presentation, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I have an Intel Mac however I was disappointed to find out that the 30-day-trial was Windows only. Is there any way I can get a chance to use it now?

[Danny Diaz]

Even though the season is over, you are still more than welcome to ask for Mac and Linux versions of LabVIEW, we didn't put any time limits on the request period...

One thing to keep in mind, though - we do not have a Mac interface for directly programming the cRIO family of controllers (we did at one time, but have since deprecated it). While you will be able to develop LabVIEW code for the Mac, you will only be able to upload code to the cRIO controller from Windows or Linux. I do not know if the C/C++ interface will have this limitation or not, but that information will be made available when the full system is released.

-Danny

[MWagon]

Those of you with the newer Intel-based Mac's can consider running the Windows version of LabVIEW under Bootcamp (comes with the Mac) or by purchasing a copy of Parallels Desktop ($69 - $89). See www.parallels.com or other Virtualization software. Here's a link from NI's website documenting operation of Labview and the cRio under Parallels and VMWare Fusion www.vmware.com/mac


http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6521

Caveats:

1. No, I have not tried this myself yet
2. Yes, I know virualizers will not be as fast as the base CPU, blah blah
3. In addition to the Intel Mac, you'll want as much RAM as you can manage. 2 Gb would be a good starting point.

Have fun!

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by MWagon

Those of you with the newer Intel-based Mac's can consider running the Windows version of LabVIEW under Bootcamp (comes with the Mac) or by purchasing a copy of Parallels Desktop ($69 - $89). See www.parallels.com or other Virtualization software. Here's a link from NI's website documenting operation of Labview and the cRio under Parallels and VMWare Fusion www.vmware.com/mac

We use VMWare like this in-house, and I've seen Parallels Desktop work (it's incredibly slick).

-Danny

[MWagon]

While I'm sure the Mac users out there already know this, I should have mentioned that Apple's Boot Camp requires you to re-boot into Windoze from OSX and back. One of the best reasons for using one of the 3rd party Virtualizers like Parallels & Fusion which are apps that run in their own window on the OSX desktop.

As Danny said, either one offers a super-smooth & robust WinPC if needed.

[Arkorobotics]

Originally Posted by MWagon

While I'm sure the Mac users out there already know this, I should have mentioned that Apple's Boot Camp requires you to re-boot into Windoze from OSX and back. One of the best reasons for using one of the 3rd party Virtualizers like Parallels & Fusion which are apps that run in their own window on the OSX desktop.

As Danny said, either one offers a super-smooth & robust WinPC if needed.

Well the compactRIO is going to change everything, if I am not mistaken, LabVIEW can program/collect data from the cRIO. If you install LabVIEW on any machine running Mac OS X then your set. Right?

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by Arkorobotics

Well the compactRIO is going to change everything, if I am not mistaken, LabVIEW can program/collect data from the cRIO. If you install LabVIEW on any machine running Mac OS X then your set. Right?

No, it's not that straightforward for communicating with real-time controllers. There's a whole deployment framework designed to communicate with, transfer files to, configure, and manipulate real-time controllers. And, unfortunately, we did not port the new deployment framework to the Mac when we overhauled the framework several releases back - there were business reasons for us not doing so. The same business reasons that make it so that LabVIEW does not support the Mac any more unless you have an Intel Mac (as of LabVIEW 8.5).

-Danny

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by Danny Diaz

While you will be able to develop LabVIEW code for the Mac, you will only be able to upload code to the cRIO controller from Windows or Linux. I do not know if the C/C++ interface will have this limitation or not, but that information will be made available when the full system is released.

To my knowledge LabVIEW on Linux is not supported for targeting the cRIO either.

As for the WindRiver tools, I haven't seen anything but a Windows installer.

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by jhersh

To my knowledge LabVIEW on Linux is not supported for targeting the cRIO either.

Dang, you are correct. I just checked, and the last time we had a Linux system as a deployable host was also the last time we had a Mac system as a deployable host, which was several versions back.

It looks as if you cannot deploy software to a cRIO unless you're running Windows - only Windows can serve as the RT Host.

-Danny

[kamocat]

Originally Posted by Danny Diaz

Dang, you are correct. I just checked, and the last time we had a Linux system as a deployable host was also the last time we had a Mac system as a deployable host, which was several versions back.

It looks as if you cannot deploy software to a cRIO unless you're running Windows - only Windows can serve as the RT Host.

-Danny

Exactly which versions of Windows does it work with?

(And is NI planning on porting the deployment functionality to Mac by 2010?)

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by kamocat

Exactly which versions of Windows does it work with?

(And is NI planning on porting the deployment functionality to Mac by 2010?)

LabVIEW will work on Windows XP and Windows Vista. You should be able to use either of these operating systems in a virtual machine on a Mac or with Bootcamp.

I am not aware of plans to port native support for deployment to the Mac by 2010.

-Joe