©
National Instruments Corporation
17
NI SIgnal Generators Getting Started Guide
Generating an Arbitrary Waveform
To generate an arbitrary waveform using the FGEN SFP, complete the
following steps:
Note
(NI 5401/5402/5404/5406 Devices)
These devices do
not
support arbitrary waveform generation.
1. Launch the FGEN SFP from
Start»All Programs»
National Instruments»NI-FGEN»FGEN Soft Front Panel
.
2. Verify that the device you installed appears on the FGEN SFP display,
shown in Figure 4, or select
Edit»Device Configuration
(Figure 5) to
choose a different signal generator device from the drop-down listbox
arrow.
3. Click the
Single Arbitrary Waveform Mode
button shown in the
following figure.
4. Click the
Download Waveform
button shown in the following figure to
download a waveform to the device onboard memory.
Select
Load Waveform from disk
. The Select File dialog box opens and
displays waveform example files.
Note
You also can download a waveform by selecting
File»Load
New Waveform
. For the installation location of the example
waveforms, refer to the
NI-FGEN Instrument Driver Readme
.
5. Select
arbMode-sine.lvm
and click
OK
. The File Load dialog box
and Waveform Preview window launch. You can close or minimize
the Waveform Preview window.
6. In the File Load dialog box, select one of the following settings from the
Waveform
drop-down listbox:
♦
NI-5411/5412/5431—sine, 16 MHz at 40 MS/s
♦
All other signal generators—sine, 40 MHz at 100 MS/s
7. Click
OK
.
8. Click the
Run
button to initiate waveform generation. To optimize the
sine wave shape, select
Edit»Device Configuration
, and change the
filter settings.
The FGEN SFP default settings instruct the arbitrary waveform generator to
generate a continuous sine wave, with a peak-to-peak amplitude of 1 V into
a 50
Ω
load, and no offset. For more information about the FGEN SFP, select
