Tip Jar #4 - Arrays of Clusters of WHAT?!?

In this entry, I discuss and hopefully demystify some of the common data structures within LabVIEW, including arrays of clusters of arrays.

New and novice LabVIEW programmers users are often introduced to the "bundle" function for the first time when they start plotting multiple sets of data on waveform graphs. It isn't always clear that you are in fact creating a cluster, nor is it clear why you sometimes use a 2-D array of numbers, and sometimes you bundle.

Another common issue arises when combining data sets of different lengths onto a single waveform graph. In this case, bundling the data is absolutely necessary in order to avoid having additional "zero" data appended to the end of your shorter data sets.

In this blog entry, I touch on these issues, and also spend time discussing other aspects of arrays and arrays of clusters, including:
Storing data records in arrays of clusters
Sorting 2D arrays using the OpenG Sort Array function
Sorting Arrays of clusters

I also talk very briefly about the FIRST Robotics competition. This year, thousands of high school students will be using LabVIEW for the first time. Get out there and mentor a team near you! You will be surprised and motivated by their ability to learn LabVIEW and impress you.

As always, please feel free to add your comments below.

Ben Zimmer
-- LV Mastery Team

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