**2.4.8 Example of a video tutorial for learning the G language used in mechanical engineering**

To ease the study of the programming language G, an on-line tutorial has been designed, which uses multimedia elements to provide examples for the main notions involved. The tutorial contains 17 lessons (fig. 4.), which are titled as follows: About Labview, Windows,

Fig. 4. The Home page of G Language Tutorial

Build VI, Data Type, SubVI, Debug, While Loop, For Loop, Array, Clusters, Case Structure, Sequence structure, String, Files, Build an Application. Each lesson contains text and pictures, in which the content is illustrated. The tutorial begins with an introduction that provides some initial background (figure 5.). "LabVIEW is a tool by National Instruments Company. It is an integrated development environment (with graphic interface), based on the G language. It is different from other development environments in that programming in LabVIEW is based on the concept of connecting icons.

When using LabVIEW there is no need to write any source code, it is enough to create a graphic representation of the desired program, using icons. Connected icons make up diagrams representing the data flow from the data sources to the program output. The inputs and outputs can be either external devices or user interfaces (on a diagram they are represented by an appropriate icon). This unified interface between LabVIEW and external devices makes it easy to set up the computer as a supervising and controlling device. LabVIEW is often used in research centres".
