topic Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics in LabVIEW

LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:47:08 GMT

I found a repeatable bug in LabVIEW 8. Here are some simple steps to demonstrate it:

1. Open a new blank VI.

2. Place a control in it. (A boolean works well for demonstration, but I also found the problem occurs for others)

3. Right click: advanced->customize...

4. Copy a picture in a graphics application (just create something simple in Paint and copy it)

5. Go back to the control you are customizing in LabVIEW. Right click on the control and do "Import Picture from Clipboard->false"

6. Close the control, replacing the control with the customized version. (Doesn't matter if you save the custom control or not nor if you save it as a control, typedef, or strict typedef.)

7. Copy the boolean and paste a second copy of it into your VI.

8. Open a new project, adding your VI to it.

9. Create a new .exe application in the project, go to "Source Files" in its properties, add your VI as the startup VI.

10. Build your application.

11. Run it.

You'll see that only one of your booleans has the graphics that you imported and the other will have some place-holder graphic (a stretched 'd') instead of the desired graphic.

In playing around with this, I found a simple workaround that would fix this example would be to import the graphics for each copy of the control in the main VI (right click on each copy of the control, customize, import graphics again). However, this isn't a good workaround in my application where I have many instances of my customized button and the button is saved as a typedef. The whole idea with typedefs is that I can edit it and every instance of it in my applications will reflect the changes. I don't want to disconnect from the typedef, which is what I would have to do to apply this workaround.

Reusing a control with imported graphics worked fine for me in LabVIEW 7.1. I didn't have problems with this until I upgraded to LabVIEW 8.

This is the same bug that I posted about yesterday here.

One thing that I already tried is to uncheck the build application switch for "disconnect type definitions and remove unused polymophic BI instances". Doesn't seem to matter how this is set.

Can anyone think of a workaround for me that doesn't involve me disconnecting from my type def?

Thanks

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:49:24 GMT

Sorry that you are having such difficulty.

I just tried your steps and I could not reproduce the behavior. I would like to look into this problem some more and I think it might help if you submitted a small project (and associated VIs/images) that I can use to reproduce the problem.

Please submit the files on these forums if possible.

Thanks

Jeff Peters

LabVIEW User Interface.

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:07:57 GMT

Thanks for looking into it.

I did post a project with VIs and screenshots yesterday at that other post that I linked to above.

I'm surpised you didn't repeat the problem because it happens for me every time. I'm running Windows 2000.

I just recreated the VI, project, exe, and screenshots and it is attached here.

Thanks

Message Edited by mochalatte on 02-08-2006 12:08 PM

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:57:40 GMT

Jeff, can you post your .exe so that I can see how it looks for me?

Is your LabVIEW 8 installation patched in any way? I just did a LabVIEW 8 installation for the first time using the SSP disks dated Nov 2005. I have the professional dev suite.

Thanks

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:01:51 GMT

I don't think I am using a patched LabVIEW. I was very careful to use the version that we released to build and execute the application. Here it is anyway. Sorry about the .zip -- apparantly you cannot attach .exe's directly.

Jeff P

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:01:50 GMT

What you built looks like it is supposed to for me also, so it seems that the problem occurs when I build on my machine.

How does the exe that I built look when you run it?

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 20:08:15 GMT

It is goofed -- like you described. But that isn't really the problem -- we need to reproduce how it got messed up, not that it is messed up.

Still working on it.

Thanks

Jeff P

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

Joe_H — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:32:32 GMT

I can build your vi and it looks just like it is supposed to. i have know idea why yours is goofed up.

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:34:50 GMT

Ok -- so it isn't just me. Are you on Win2K or WinXP? Perhaps this is just a Win2K problem?

Jeff P

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

Joe_H — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:01:19 GMT

I'm using XP.

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:07:56 GMT

sarahk wrote on this other thead:

Hi, mochalatte.

When I ran your executable I saw the bad images you described. When I created my own build from your code, however, the custom images appeared on all the buttons as desired. So I have a few question for you:

What OS are you using?
Does the problem occur repeatedly? IE, if you build the application more than once will the same behavior occur?
Does it still occur if you close and reopen LabVIEW?
Has this process ever worked for you in LabVIEW 8.0?

Sarah K.
Applications Engineer

Sarah, Thanks for looking at it. Sorry that I got 2 thread started on this, but I thought I would try to merge them here. To answer your questions:

I'm on Windows 2000

yes the problem happens every time I build an app involving imported pictures on my machine

yes it happens every time I launch

no, this has never worked for me in LabVIEW 8.0.

I just installed this LabVIEW 8 on my machine Friday.

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:30:27 GMT

On more disturbing bit of data on this: Today I installed LabVIEW 8 on my laptop, and there my application it builds fine--no problems with missing pictures <blink>.

What is the same:

* Both machines run Win2000 as managed by my workplace. (Both machines get the same patches pushed to them, so there can hardly be any room for OS differences between them.)

* Both machines orginally had 7.1 installed. I applied the 7.1.1 patch to both of them and did mass recompiles on both of them more than a year ago.

* I installed LabVIEW 8 on each of them in an identical manner: I did not uninstall LV711, I installed LabVIEW8 in the default folder with all the default options, and I installed the 2 driver disks with mostly default options (I turned on a serial driver package and an IVI compliance package on each machine)

* Both computers are HP machines.

What is different:

* The problem occurs on my desktop where I do almost all my development. The other computer where the build works fine is a laptop.

* I have not yet installed all the toolkits that come with the Prof Developers Suite on the Laptop. Here's the toolkits I installed on my desktop (none of which I have yet put on the laptop):

Advanced Signal Processing
Enterprise

Database Connectivity
Internet
SPC

PID Control
Report Generation
State Diagram
VI Analyzer

Do you think the problem could have been introduced on my desktop with one of those toolkit installs?

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 15:27:41 GMT

Today I installed the same toolkits on the laptop, one by one, building my little test project between each install and never did start having the problem with the missing picture. I rebooted and tried building one more time--still no problem.

I've got a sick LabVIEW environment on my desktop in a small, yet bothersome way 😞

If it comes to it, are there instructions posted anywhere for completely cleaning LabVIEW off your computer and out of your registry etc. to prepare it for a pristine reinstall? I think I would be inclined to remove both LV 71 and LV8 and reinstall only 8 (despite my current problems).

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:17:15 GMT

It seems like figuring what the source of that stretched 'd' graphic might give an indication as to what is going wrong for me. Have you looked into that with the LabVIEW developers?

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:33:22 GMT

Ok, the LabVIEW on my laptop is broken now also. That is, whenever I try to build anything that has more than one copy of a custom control with an imported picture, only one picture shows up in the resulting application.

As I posted above, everything was working fine on the laptop earlier today. Here's what I did on the notebook after that:

1. I added a test specification to my little test build (the same one I most recently attached in this thread) to build an installer. After building it, I ran the installer and then ran the resulting exe from within my "c:\program files\my project" folder. I'm pretty sure that it worked like it should; however, I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly because when I run it now it has the problem. As a test, I took a copy of that exe to a computer in the lab that never had LabVIEW8 installed on it before, installed the runtime engine on it, and when I look at the exe it has the problem there too.

2. The other thing I did was to build my real project (the one that I have been developing in LabVIEW 711 for the last several months) on my laptop. I did so with the same .lvproj file that I created on my desktop using the .bld file conversion utility that comes with LabVIEW8.

In any case, one of the two actions above has made the same permanent change to my notebook that I have on my desktop: Even from a fresh reboot and a fresh launch of LabVIEW and a freshly-created test project, if I build a project involving more than one copy of a custom control with an imported picture, the resulting application only shows one copy of the picture and a place-holder d's everywhere else. I've attached the new test project I just created on the laptop showing this to be the case there too.

Travis

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:23 GMT

Just redoing the attachement. The one above doesn't have the exe I built.

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:30:28 GMT

I have a pretty good idea of what is going on, but I still cannot reproduce the corruption so I still can not really understand the cause of this. You get the "d" image because the VI is saved (somehow) referencing that image -- that image is one of LV's built in images, the decimal radix image.

I tried your new steps and looked at your application. I still cannot reproduce the corruption.

Jeff P

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:35:22 GMT

Actually, I just tried your new application and installer and the application runs fine... no missing images.

Did I miss something?

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

travispape — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:43:16 GMT

@jpeters wrote:

Actually, I just tried your new application and installer and the application runs fine... no missing images.

Did I miss something?

I've attached what I see when I run the exe in my test5 attachment above

Re: LabVIEW 8 bug?: reusing custom controls with imported graphics

jpeters — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:51:17 GMT

Just to be clear: if you unzip the application attached -- you see the problem? Because I don't.

Jeff P