Hi guys! Since I first encountered LV in June, I have done a lot of studying on my own. I believe I have done more than Core 1 of the NI courses explains. Therefor I would like to do Core 2. I contacted NI in my country and they gave me a price for Core 2, Core 3 and the CLAD exam. Fair indeed, but I'm not quite sure I need Core 3. You see, I'm just making small programs for testing of electronics. The people who will use the programs work for the same company as I do. So Core seems to be overkill for my purpose with LabVIEW. I believe most of you have at least done the CLAD exam. Would you recommend me to do the Core 3 also, or would Core 2 be enough to do the CLAD exam?

Hi Evan According to the "book" you theoretically need only Core 1 and 2 before taking the CLAD. In practise I would strongly recommend that you take the course and also take the time to work a bit more, say 3-4 months with LabVIEW before the exam. However this is my general advice and may not be applicable to you specifically. You can always test your skill level with the CLAD preparation material to see how you fare. When it comes to Core 3 I think it is one of the best courses to take regardless of the CLAD. It goes more in depth into the different structures, introduces new more advanced concepts (some of my favorites are User Events and enum/variant cluster with a queue) and how to structure your entire development practice. Even though you say now you will only develop small applications for internal use these can quickly grown to something unmanagable and cost you a lot of time if you haven't thought in terms of Scalability, Readability and Maintainability, which are the three key concepts of Core 3. Hope this advice helps Best Regards David Certified LabVIEW Developer NI Sweden

LabVIEW

Do I need Core 3 to do CLAD exam?

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Also be aware, I've spoken to quite a few CLAD exam takers in the last year and they all agree that the current CLAD exams are much harder and trickier than the sample exams here on ni.com. One taker for instance missed only one question the first time he took the sample CLAD exam but failed the actual exam by a couple questions.

So make sure you're overprepared!

Brian Spears

Certified LabVIEW Developer