Academic Company Events NI Developer Zone Support Solutions Products & Services Contact NI MyNI

Document Type: Example Program
NI Supported: Yes
Publish Date: Feb 1, 2011

Connecting LabVIEW with Scilab Consortium (Digiteo) Scilab Software

47 ratings | 3.96 out of 5
Print

Overview

LabVIEW is an open platform that allows you to easily integrate 3rd-party (external) software such as Scilab from the Scilab Consortium (Digiteo). This document discusses the LabVIEW - Scilab Gateway Software, a tool that allows you to easily invoke scripts from Scilab from your LabVIEW graphical programming.

What is Scilab?

Scilab  is free software for numerical computation available from the Scilab Consortium (DIGITEO). Freely downloadable from http://www.scilab.org, Scilab offers a text-based language with built-in functions and syntax that simplify numerical computation involving vectors and matrices.

Connecting NI LabVIEW with Scilab

With the software that provides a link between LabVIEW and Scilab, you can easily invoke your Scilab Scripts from LabVIEW Virtual Instruments (VIs).

Scilab Script node

Figure 1, The Gateway software installs into LabVIEW as a script node, a text-editor region that you can drag-and-drop onto your LabVIEW block diagrams.


[+] Enlarge Image

Figure 2, You can wire into and out of the Gateway script node by defining input / output variables on the edge of a node. You can do so by right-clicking the edge of the Gateway script node and making a selection from the pop-up menu (1). Next, type the name of the variable that you wish to associate with the new input (or output) (2). You can then wire into (or out of) (3) the new input (or output).

Setup and Installation of the NI LabVIEW Scilab Gateway Software

  1. Visit NI LabVIEW Scilab Gateway to download the gateway software. The  download is a compressed zip file -- unzip the file that you download to a new folder.
  2. If you have not already done so, install Scilab 5.3.0 (or later) - Consortium Scilab (DIGITEO), If you upgrade Scilab, make sure to remove the old version before installing the latest version.
  3. If you have not already done so, install National Instruments LabVIEW.
    The Zip file that you downloaded in step 1 contains separate installers for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Gateway. Run the installer EXE that matches the revision of Scilab and LabVIEW noting the following:
  4.    The 32-bit Gateway Software requires LabVIEW (8.0 or later) – Full, Professional, Student, or Evaluation Editions.
       The 64-bit Gateway requires LabVIEW 2009 (64-bit) or later.
       The LabVIEW to Scilab Gateway software will be installed for use with the most-recently installed version of LabVIEW.
  5. Restart LabVIEW to apply the changes and complete the installation.

The installer will copy a readme.pdf file with additional instructions for working with the Gateway.

Product and company names are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

47 ratings | 3.96 out of 5
Print

Reader Comments | Submit a comment »

ver 1.1 broken
Ver 1.1 from des 2008 seems to have broken the gateway. Runtime error and wrong name of script node (originally "Script Scilab", but when right- clicking and choosing server it suddelny say "Scilab script")
- Feb 4, 2009

The gateway works with Labview 8.0, but not the examples, because they are made for Labview 8.2.1. This is naturally a problem for the Labview8.0-users. Dr. WK
- Walter Knell, privat. felix.knell@t-online.de - Feb 29, 2008

Don't work with labwiew 8.0
- Nicolas Bruyant, Cea Grenoble . nicolas.bruyant@cea.fr - Jun 15, 2007

 

Legal
This example program (this "program") was developed by a National Instruments ("NI") Applications Engineer. Although technical support of this program may be made available by National Instruments, this program may not be completely tested and verified, and NI does not guarantee its quality in any way or that NI will continue to support this program with each new revision of related products and drivers. THIS EXAMPLE PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS AS MORE SPECIFICALLY SET FORTH IN NI.COM'S TERMS OF USE (http://ni.com/legal/termsofuse/unitedstates/us/).