Fire a sub vi and keep running from the main

Question

I would like to run a sub vi (Finite Pulse Train.vi) and keep going in my main application.  Finite Pulse Train has a while loop so it takes over and my main vi waits.  Can I fire off Finite Pulse Train.vi and then come directly back to my main vi (let it do its thing)?

Answer 1

Also remember that LabVIEW has parallelism inherently built into to its compile process. This means that if you drop your subVI onto the block diagram and then don't connect it in any way with the rest of your program, it will automatically run in parallel and just "do its thing."
The key then is just to establish communication between parallel processes. The easiest, but least robust, method of doing this is to use local or global variables. You could, for instance, have a global variable for your stop button in your main loop that stops the subVI's loop.
The better solution (if you don't have the base package of LabVIEW) is to use Queues and Notifiers to handle synchronous data transfer between parallel loops. Queues essentially act like a software buffer that you can write data to and read data from. Queues are best for communication with one or more producer loops and only one consumer loop, since as soon as you "read" data from the queue, it is removed. Notifiers only hold one data item, so there's no buffering, but it can be read by multiple consumer loops without removing the data item. Notifiers are best for communication between loops with just one producer and multiple consumers.
Search the Example Finder for examples of everything mentioned here. Hope this helps!!
Jarrod S.
National Instruments