Book excerpt: Create more robust, more flexible LabVIEW applications--through software design principles! Writing LabVIEW software to perform a complex task is never easy--especially when those last-minute feature requests cause a complexity explosion in your system, forcing you to rework much of your code! Jon Conway and Steve Watts offer a better solution: LCOD-LabVIEW Component Oriented Design--which, for the first time, applies the theories and principles of software design to LabVIEW programming. The material is presented in a lighthearted, engaging manner that makes learning enjoyable, even if you're not a computer scientist. LCOD software engineering techniques make your software more robust and better able to handle complexity--by making it simpler! Even large, industrial-grade applications become manageable. Design to embrace flexibility first, making changes and bug fixes much less painful Pragmatic discussion of the authors' tried and tested techniques, written by--and for--working programmers Covers design principles; LCOD overview, implementation, and complementary techniques; engineering essentials; style issues; and more Complete with practical advice on requirements gathering, prototyping, user interface design, and rich with examples Work through an example LCOD project (all code included on companion Web site) to tie the lessons together This book is intended for test engineers, system integrators, electronics engineers, software engineers, and other intermediate to advanced LabVIEW programmers. None of the methods discussed are complex, so users can benefit as soon as they are proficient with the syntax of LabVIEW.Go to the companion Web site located at http: //author.phptr.com/watts/ for full source code and book updates.