This paper reports on the experience of the 2008 International Summer School on Mechatronics, jointly organized by the University of Málaga (Spain) and the Technical University of Dresden (Germany). An important part of the hands-on practice and two student competitions have been based on the LEGO Mindstorms NXT Set. To stimulate lab work with representative general purpose software tools, LabVIEW and the NXT add-ons have been used. The paper proposes basic Lab VIEW structures for several LEGO case study practices. A description of the course as well as an assessment on student competences are also included.