Labview 2011 with TruckSim 8.01 Automated Runs

Question

Hello,
I have been using Labview on and off for a few months so I am still fairly new.  I skimmed through the help files and various support and could not find the answer, but sorry if this is an obvious and basic question.
I am running TruckSim with Labview, changing various parameters and writing various performance measures to a file to see how the parameters effect the performance.  Currently my only option is changing certain model parameters by hand between each run.  I want to be able to let it run overnight and change parameters automatically.
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to how to make the .vi run unattended?  Specifically, the .vi has to execute and write various numbers to a text file (got that part down), then stop the run, reset everything, change certain model parameters to new values, re-run the .vi, append the new results to the same file (I know how to do that), rinse and repeat several hundred or several thousand times.
I was loosely thinking I could stuff my entire while loop inside of another larger while loop and then I could use the loop counter from the larger one as the index of an array containing the parameters I want to change.  So the 10th execution would go and grab the 10th value in my array'ed list of parameters.  I haven't thought about how to reset the time counter and everything else to zero between runs.  I see there is a 'run continuously' button.  That would be fine and dandy if, between runs, I could persuade it to automatically change those parameters I need to change.
Thats the first question.  Second question is much more straight forward.  Using the write to text function, I just want to write things at the END of the entire simulation.  Not every execution of the loop.  This must be slowing it down tremendously as it has to write ~a dozen numbers to a file 1000 times a second.
Thanks for your time!  Much appreciated.
I attached a screenshot of the default base file that I built into.
Attachments:
TruckSim_Base vi.PNG ‏39 KB

Answer 1

I think you are after the same thing I am, and I was finally able to accomplish it using "VS COM Interface" commands
(in TruckSim, go to Help > Reference Manuals > VI COM Interface)
This documents provides a list of all of the commands you can use to control TruckSim from another application. There are examples for Matlab and VB, but nothing for Labview so I basically figured it out. You can use Labview to control just about anything in Truck from changing bluelinks to running the simulation. I built severals arrays in Labview for the different brakes, suspension, wheelbase, etc then Labview chugs through each simulation, changing one thing at a time (or whatever I want changed) and then in the end I have a mound of data from all of the various runs.
Attached is a very basic example of how to use the VS COM commands in Labview.
Attachments:
TruckSim_Example.vi ‏8 KB