LabVIEW
Systems engineering & MBSE tools
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
Take the quiz to check if LabVIEW and its alternatives fit your requirements.
Contact the product provider
Free TrialFree version
Small
Medium
Large
- Education and training
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Energy and utilities
What is LabVIEW
LabVIEW is a graphical programming environment used to develop automated test, measurement, and control applications, often in conjunction with data acquisition and instrumentation hardware. Engineering teams use it to build user interfaces, implement measurement logic, and integrate with lab and production test systems. It emphasizes dataflow-based development and provides extensive libraries for instrument control, signal processing, and hardware I/O.
Strong test and measurement integration
LabVIEW provides mature drivers and APIs for common instrumentation and data acquisition workflows, including integration with modular I/O and test hardware. This reduces the amount of low-level coding required for lab automation and production test benches. It is well suited for teams that need to connect to heterogeneous instruments and manage synchronized acquisition and control.
Rapid UI and workflow prototyping
The graphical, dataflow approach supports fast creation of operator interfaces and measurement sequences. Engineers can iterate on panels, charts, logging, and control loops without building a full application framework from scratch. This can be advantageous for experimental setups and evolving test procedures where requirements change frequently.
Extensive libraries and ecosystem
LabVIEW includes built-in functions for analysis, signal processing, file I/O, and communications, plus a large ecosystem of add-ons and community examples. This helps teams reuse proven patterns for common measurement and automation tasks. The ecosystem also supports integration with external code and tools through interfaces such as DLLs and language interop options (depending on deployment choices).
Not a full MBSE suite
While it is used in systems engineering contexts, LabVIEW is primarily an implementation and test/measurement development environment rather than a dedicated MBSE modeling tool. It does not natively focus on SysML-based architecture modeling, requirements traceability, or end-to-end model governance in the way purpose-built MBSE platforms do. Teams often pair it with separate requirements and system modeling tools to cover those needs.
Licensing and deployment complexity
LabVIEW typically involves multiple editions, toolkits, and runtime/deployment considerations that can complicate standardization across teams. Costs can increase when projects require specialized modules, additional drivers, or deployment targets. Managing version compatibility across developers and test stations can require disciplined configuration management.
Graphical code maintainability challenges
Large LabVIEW applications can become difficult to review and refactor compared with text-based codebases, especially when diagrams grow complex. Enforcing consistent architecture, documentation, and code review practices is important to avoid “spaghetti” block diagrams. Organizations may need specialized training and governance to maintain long-lived systems.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| LabVIEW Community Edition | Free for non-commercial use | Same core functionality as LabVIEW Professional for personal/hobby projects; available to download from NI and requires NI account/activation. |
| LabVIEW Base | Contact NI for pricing (subscription & perpetual available) | Recommended for building simple test and measurement applications; includes standard hardware integration, UIs, basic math and data saving. |
| LabVIEW Full | Contact NI for pricing (subscription & perpetual available) | Includes advanced analysis and signal processing capabilities beyond Base. |
| LabVIEW Professional | Contact NI for pricing (subscription & perpetual available) | Full Professional functionality; recommended for complex applications; downloadable 7‑day trial available (trial can be extended up to 45 days). |
| LabVIEW+ Suite | Contact NI for pricing (subscription & perpetual available) | Bundle that includes LabVIEW Professional plus DIAdem, TestStand, FlexLogger and other NI software; free trial indicated for the suite. |
Seller details
NI (National Instruments Corporation), a subsidiary of Emerson Electric Co.
Austin, Texas, USA
1976
Subsidiary
https://www.ni.com/
https://x.com/ni
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ni/
