CLD Tips - you can't have too many

Question

Here's some specific practice items you might work on in preparation for the CLD.
Practice coding a timer that can be Paused, Restarted, Stopped, and Reset to Zero. Practice coding this timer from scratch. There are several examples on the forums of these timers.
Practice using the Timer express VI (don't reinvent the wheel if this timer will work for you. NI does not deduct points for using this VI, and it is in fact a very useful tool)
Practice your ability to properly apply a reset to the timer(s) in a state machine.
Practice accumulating a counter which can be reset by a user or automatically if a test is restarted. Remember, you will typically count how many times an event successfully takes place.
Practice subtracting elements from one thing while adding to another, and keep track of it. For example, subtract rocks from a rock pile while adding rocks to a dump truck. The rock pile has X rocks but the dump truck can hold only Y rocks. Say it takes 3.5 trips of the dump truck to carry away all the rocks. Can you keep track of that type of operation?
Practice creating and reading to/from an INI file, TXT file, Binary file, and CSV file.
Practice code that uses the File Dialog box, and handle all user input, including Cancel (don't let it throw an error, handle it).
Practice coding a proper sequencer using a State Machine. Your sequencer should be able to carry out a list of commands in a queue or array, and...
...be able to skip certain steps if requested by the user
...be able to be paused and then continued, while not loosing data such as time acrued on the current step.
...be able to be stopped and aborted, with exceptions handled, and your program goes to a proper state afterwards
...be able to be used again without stale data like timer values or skipped steps from past runs mucking up the new run
and the most important thing in my opinion, which has been said a lot but I'll say it again ....
Practice the sample exams and time yourself
Richard

Answer 1

In terms of time efficiency, a few thoughts. I haven't passed the CLD yet (1 week away for me), but this helped me improve my speed on the practice exams:
Learn to use Quick Drop, plus the Insert feature with Quick Drop. This drastically increased my coding speed. Make a few 3 or 4 letter shortcuts for commonly used diagram items and get used to them. You're given time to prep the LabVIEW environment before the exam, so add your favorite shortcuts. For the test, I would definitely include for/while/case structures, build array, replace array subset, queue functions. If you use variants then include Variant To Data and To Variant.
If you aren't already, get used to Auto-Tool. Using Auto-Tool saves you a second or so every time you want to modify anything on the block diagram or front panel. For EVERY action. A second isn't much on its own until you add it up for almost any click while coding.
When you're doing your planning after reading the spec (or as you read the spec), drop the notes down as comment boxes on the block diagram. This takes care of your planning while also starting your documentation.
Get used to doing a quick "Ctrl+I" to pull up a sub-VI's info. When you spawn a new sub-VI, do a Ctrl+I and go to Documentation. Fill out a quick little note here. Now whenever you do a "Ctrl+I" it'll go directly to Documentation and you can quickly type in a few notes.
Make sure you can quickly throw together your state machine template. I like to start with the producer/consumer template built into LabVIEW, then do my modifications from there. Whatever you're comfortable with, get used to tossing it together fast. 
Good luck everyone!
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