LabVIEW
LabVIEW subscription model for 2022
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@1100fps wrote:
Because I work in the machine vision industry, I may have to think about jumping to an alternate platform and will start tracking features on competing platforms. I hate to start learning a new programming environment, but given the disparity in feature sets, and customer support, it may be time. Sigh.
As far as machine vision goes, you should have looked at other options already for some years. IMAQ Vision was a nice Toolkit 20 years ago after they had purchased it from an Alliance Member and reworked it to be more inline with other LabVIEW VI libraries. NI-IMAQ and IMAQdx where promising hardware drivers. NI has many years ago pretty much stopped selling Vision acquisition hardware (yes they have or rather had two or so display port cards) but since quite a few years they discontinued pretty much everything else that had to do with vision hardware. IMAQ Vision hasn't seen any significant change other than very minor fixes in something like 8 - 10 years.
The OCR functions and barcode functions often don't work, where other libraries like Halcon have no problems with exactly the same source image. So yes, NI abandoned machine vision more or less and several years ago they stopped the motion business unit completely. Machine vision in LabVIEW is still possible, and if you have not to involved requirements you may even get away with using IMAQ Vision, but for modern and professional machine Vision libraries you need to look elsewhere. The problem there is that they don't do LabVIEW bindings, so you have to create them yourself if you want to use it in LabVIEW.
@Jay14159265 wrote:
It is impossible to be as "good" at python as you can be with labview because python does not have built in UI support.... For example if you want to make a simple application that opens a file and plots some data based on some UI settings. In labview that is maybe 1hour to make it look real nice.
LabVIEW has many strengths, but making modern UIs is not one of them. I compared the strengths and weaknesses of LabVIEW vs. Qt several years ago and I daresay the comparison still holds: https://forum.qt.io/topic/90276/showdown-qt-vs-labview
The only GUI-related area where LabVIEW shines is that it lets you get a simple plot up and running quickly. But be prepared for pain if you want to make a LabVIEW UI that's dynamic, user-configurable, multilingual, has complex charts, scalable to different screen sizes, adapts to different DPIs, supports SVGs, etc. etc. etc.
I don't think the lack of built-in UI support is a big issue, since there are multiple GUI toolkits for Python to choose from. Some even provide graphical editors.
Before you advocate Qt as UI Toolkit library, you may want to check out its license. Unless you develop true Open Source software (and not just any but (L)GPL), and also not just never released internal tools, which usually would be commercial if developed within a company, it has a SaaS type license cost too. And it is pretty much as high as LabVIEW.
I have to admit that one positive side effect of Qt having gone full commercial is that its tools like the Qt Creator and IDE certainly have gained a lot of functionality and shiny polish.
As to .Net being open source, yes it is. But it isn't as functional as the Windows .Net Framework and likely never will be as far as some Windows enterprise technologies are concerned, partly simply also since that does not really translate to other platforms and/or would be a very huge undertaking to implement there as a lot of underlying technology would have to be ported too. And of course if .Net Core can't do it on non-Windows platforms then Python can't either, so it's not a point of Python vs .Net, just a limitation that stands there.
Why not use WinForms? Personally maybe because it is the umptienth GUI framework released by Microsoft with all the previous ones more or less having been abandoned. Who can guarantee you that they won't Silverlight that over a few years too for something called NetWidgets or similar?
As to GUI's in LabVIEW. Yes they are not shiny and not looking like the latest craze that will be frowned upon by most users tomorrow already and obsolete next month anyways. 😀
But a lot of LabVIEW users still mainly develop applications to do measurements and present the data to the operator. Many customers can't care less if the look is particular or rather matching the current OS styled firly fanzy window look in any way. They want the measurements done, the operator being able to easily control the system and the generated data files being correct and ready for further processing in there online analysis platforms and such. For such users the current LabVIEW UI building is pretty much unbeatable. No GUI editor that generates a definition file that you have to include in your source code and reference more or less cryptic defines from, to access a specific widget to do anything with it.
If you need to do a Star Wars themed UI instead, while it can be done in LabVIEW too, it is not as comfortable anymore and the advantage of LabVIEW is pretty much lost.
@rolfk wrote:
Before you advocate Qt as UI Toolkit library, you may want to check out its license. Unless you develop true Open Source software... and also not just never released internal tools...
You are allowed to use LGPL libraries in your published proprietary software, you know.
As to GUI's in LabVIEW. Yes they are not shiny and not looking like the latest craze that will be frowned upon by most users tomorrow already and obsolete next month anyways. 😀
But a lot of LabVIEW users still mainly develop applications to do measurements and present the data to the operator.
I'm not talking about futuristic Star Wars HUDs. My previous post listed "UI that's dynamic, user-configurable, multilingual, has complex charts, scalable to different screen sizes, adapts to different DPIs, supports SVGs, etc. etc. etc." which are reasonable requirements for industrial/enterprise software. The customer shouldn't need to ask come back and ask for a software modification in order to take advantage of their upgraded computer monitor, for example.
Regarding presenting data to the operator, the lack of basic API for things like https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Allow-text-labels-for-graph-scales/idi-p/921601/ makes life a lot harder than necessary. We often talk about the fun of LabVIEW programming, but writing hacks to do basic GUI tasks are not part of that fun.
I believe Graftek was the company which originally developed IMAQ Vision, then called Concept V.I., before NI acquired it. There was a bit of confusion as I seem to remember, because it was originally French based but then moved to Austin somehow.
