NI Sound and Vibration Assistant Readme

Version 7.0

November 2008

This file contains information about NI Sound and Vibration Assistant 7.0. This file also provides you with help resources you can use while working with the Sound and Vibration Assistant. Refer to the Getting Started with the NI Sound and Vibration Assistant manual for information about getting started with the Sound and Vibration Assistant. You can access this PDF by selecting Help»Getting Started with»Sound and Vibration Assistant in the Sound and Vibration Assistant.

This file contains the following information:

Overview

New Features

System Requirements

Installation Instructions

Accessing the Help

Finding Examples

Known Issues

Bug Fixes

Overview

The Sound and Vibration Assistant is a powerful interactive tool that extends existing NI LabVIEW SignalExpress technology. The Sound and Vibration Assistant simplifies the process of acquiring, analyzing, and displaying sound and vibration signals by offering the following:

• A drag-and-drop, interactive acquisition and analysis environment
• Rapid measurement configuration
• Extended functionality through NI LabVIEW
• Analysis:
  • FFT analysis support for multichannel power spectrum and zoom power spectrum, and frequency response (1xN)
  • Spectrum measurements support for peak search, power in band, and limit test measurements
  • Level measurements support for sound level and vibration level
  • Fractional-octave analysis
  • Audio measurements support for single-tone (distortion and channel evaluation) and noise measurements, and tone extraction
  • Order analysis support for order tracking, order spectrum, order waveform, and spectral map displays.
• Displaying and logging:
  • Octave graph
  • Waterfall and colormap displays
  • Machine vibration displays, such as polar, orbit, timebase, and shaft centerline plots
  • Harmonic and peaks tables
  • Engineering unit support
  • Logging and playback of time-domain signals
  • UFF58 (universal file format) file support to load and save time-domain data
  • Data snap shots and documentation
  • Export to Microsoft Excel

Use the Getting Started with the NI Sound and Vibration Assistant manual to familiarize yourself with Sound and Vibration Assistant features and functionality.

New Features

The Sound and Vibration Assistant 7.0 provides the following new features:

• Steps to generate, and viewers to display, the following plots:
  • Bode
  • Polar
  • Orbit
  • Timebase
  • Shaft Centerline
• Operator interface that allows project developers to preconfigure a project, create a customized interface suitable for operator skill level, and prevent modification of the project by use of password protection.
• Updated developer interface that allows for additional customization of the assistant environment, such as floating and docking of windows, and features to automatically hide unused tabs.
• Recording supports additional data types, such as power spectra and frequency response functions.
• Advanced run configuration allows for quick configuration of continuous as well as time- and iteration-based run modes.

System Requirements

The Sound and Vibration Assistant requires a minimum of 1 GB of RAM and a Pentium 4/M or equivalent processor.

If you use the Sound and Vibration Assistant with National Instruments data acquisition hardware, you must install NI-DAQmx 8.5 or later.

Installation Instructions

Refer to the Getting Started with the NI Sound and Vibration Assistant manual for information about installing the Sound and Vibration Assistant. National Instruments strongly recommends that you restart the computer after installing the Sound and Vibration Assistant. You also must activate the Sound and Vibration Assistant using the NI License Manager.

Accessing the Help

You can access the Sound and Vibration Assistant Help, part of the LabVIEW SignalExpress Help, by selecting Help»Sound and Vibration Assistant Help and navigating to the LabVIEW SignalExpress Step Reference»Sound and Vibration Assistant Steps book on the Contents tab. You also can view the step and control-level help in the dynamic help and hover help windows in the right pane of a Sound and Vibration Assistant project.

Finding Examples

You can access the Sound and Vibration Assistant example projects by selecting Help»Open Example»Sound and Vibration Assistant in the Sound and Vibration Assistant. Use the example projects in the Tutorial subdirectory with the Getting Started with the NI Sound and Vibration Assistant manual.

The Sound and Vibration Assistant example projects are intended for use with National Instruments dynamic signal acquisition hardware. If you use any other device that does not support the specific measurements in the example project, you must change the Measurement Type to a measurement type supported by the device you want to use. You can change the Measurement Type on the Channel View tab or on the DAQmx Acquire Step Setup tab.

Known Issues

The following list describes known issues at the time of release.

• The Sound and Vibration Assistant might run slowly or fail to load. Refer to the Knowledge Base (4F8EJ09S) at ni.com for a workaround.
• Saving and reloading a project or changing certain step information can cause the Sound and Vibration Assistant to lose subgroup definitions. Workaround: Do not create subgroups when working with sound and vibration data.
• The Sound and Vibration Assistant Tutorial might launch but not respond. Workaround: Ensure you have installed Adobe Flash Player version 10.0 or later. Refer to the Adobe Web site at www.adobe.com for information about Adobe Flash Player.
• Sound and Vibration Assistant example projects that acquire data require the device name to be Dev1. If you want to use the example projects with your hardware, verify the device name is Dev1 in the Measurement & Automation Explorer. If you need to rename your hardware, right-click the device in MAX and select Rename from the shortcut menu.
• You lose the buffered data of a colormap, speed profile, XY graph, or waterfall graph if you switch from Playback mode to Monitor / Record mode and then switch back to Playback mode.
• When you export colormap or waterfall graph data to an Excel spreadsheet, you might lose some of the data if you use Microsoft Excel 2003 or earlier. Microsoft Excel 2003 has a maximum limit of 256 columns for a worksheet.
• (Windows Vista) If you install the Sound and Vibration Measurement Suite 7.0 or Sound and Vibration Toolkit 7.0 with LabVIEW 8.2.1, and you have LabVIEW 8.5 installed, you cannot generate LabVIEW block diagram code from the Sound and Vibration Assistant. Refer to the Knowledge Base (4BAC1SUK) at ni.com for a workaround.
• If you build a project with the Limit Test step and apply code generation to the project from the Assistant to LabVIEW 8.2.1, the result of the code generation might be broken. You must re-wire the CG_Limit Test RepackData.vi in the labview\vi.lib\express\SignalExpress\Support\Test\LimitTest.llb.

Bug Fixes

The following item is the ID and title of a subset of issues fixed between the Sound and Vibration Assistant 6.0 and 7.0. If you have a CAR ID, you can search this list to validate that the issue has been fixed. This is not an exhaustive list of issues fixed in the current version of the Sound and Vibration Assistant.

Copyright

© 2008 National Instruments Corporation. All rights reserved.

Under the copyright laws, this publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storing in an information retrieval system, or translating, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of National Instruments Corporation.

Trademarks

National Instruments, NI, ni.com, and LabVIEW are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation. Refer to the Terms of Use section on ni.com/legal for more information about National Instruments trademarks.

Patents

For patents covering the National Instruments products, refer to the appropriate location: Help»Patents in your software, the patents.txt file on your media, or ni.com/patents.