LabVIEW Installation for a Hands-On Event

This page has the instructions students need to setup and use LabVIEW on their personal computers for a University Hands-On Event. To complete all the exercises, students will need LabVIEW, DAQ, and VISA installed on their machine, per the instructions below. VI Package Manager is also recommended in order to enable access to common libraries for additional functionality.

LabVIEW Community Edition (CE)

LabVIEW CE is completely free for students and hobbyists when used for non-commercial applications. LabVIEW Community has all the same features and capabilities as LabVIEW Professional and supports the same drivers, add-ons and toolkits as any other version.

Windows and Linux

• Visit this link
• Select Operating System from the Supported OS drop-down menu
• Select the latest version from the Version drop down
• Select Community from the Included Editions drop down
• You will need an ni.com to download and activate the CE version of LabVIEW

Note: The Linux version of LabVIEW CE requires an internet connection at all times

macOS

• Native: LabVIEW 2023 Q3 is the latest version of LabVIEW that provides native macOS support. It is compatible on both Intel and ARM-based Apple devices. It can be downloaded from the same page as Windows and Linux versions by selecting Mac OS in the drop down.
• Emulation: Intel-based Apple devices can run the latest Windows and Linux versions of LabVIEW in emulation environments such as VirtualBox, VMWare and Parallels.
• ARM-based Apple devices such as the M1 and M2 chipsets, require a different instruction-set.

• Mac-native versions of LabVIEW 2023 and earlier versions are available from the same page as Windows and Linux. However, 2024 and later versions are not officially supported by NI. To download LabVIEW 2024 CE for macOS, please review this information: LabVIEW for macOS

DAQ Drivers

Unversity Hands-On events will typically use Data Acquisition (DAQ) hardware to interface with sensors and measurement devices. This driver will enable support for all NI DAQ devices, which can be found here NI DAQ equipment

Note that DAQ drivers are only available for Windows and Linux

VISA Drivers

This is the standard driver to interface with bench top instrumentation, such as Scopes, Power Supplies, Function Generators, etc.. It also provides support for serial devices using RS-232

VI Package Manager

This is the 'App Store' for all LabVIEW add-ons and toolkits, the full library of which can be found on VIPM.io