Build fails because "Actor.vi" has no block diagram

[Thomas_robertson]

Anyone seen this before?   White arrows all around but when I try to build:

A VI broke during the build process from being saved without a block diagram. Either open the build specification to include the block diagram of that VI or enable debugging to include the block diagrams of all VIs in the build. Report this error to National Instruments technical support.

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2023\vi.lib\ActorFramework\Actor\Actor.vi

-----------------------

Click the link below to visit the Application Builder support page. Use the following information as a reference:

Error 1502 occurred at AB_Source_VI.lvclass:Close_Reference.vi -> AB_Build.lvclass:Save.vi

Possible reason(s):

LabVIEW: (Hex 0x5DE) Cannot save a bad VI without its block diagram.

[OneOfTheDans]

Yes, bane of my development time with the AF. Technically never an issue with the AF, more so LabVIEW's poor tooling that fails to identify which child/subVI is actually broken. No easy fix that I know of, I end up brute force debugging and bashing the code until eventually finding/resolving the issue.

First and easiest thing to try is the usual LabVIEW solution: Clear Compiled Object Cache, restart LabVIEW, maybe Mass Compile. This will help if LabVIEW has a corrupt/old version of a VI in its cache.

Since you have white arrows all around, the error probably means LabVIEW is breaking your application when it "optimizes" the build, for example by removing unused items from libraries.

I think this is usually in the Actor Core.vi for me - the fact you're seeing it with Actor.vi (which is the top-level VI) might mean your problem is in a Pre Launch Init.vi override somewhere.

Good luck, it's never fun (unless it's a stupid, obviously broken VI, in which case that'll be a relief!).

[AWilcox]

Error 1502 during build was the bane of my existence for months. Eventually what I had to do was ruthlessly hunt down and eliminate every Conditional Disable and Disable Diagram structure in the project. I was able to replace the Conditional Disable structures with a basic Case structure linked to the Application.Kind property, since all we were doing with the Conditional Disable structure was triggering different behavior depending upon whether the VI was being run by LabVIEW or by the run-time engine.

In the Source File Settings of the project build settings you also need to make sure that Actor Core VI for all your Actors has both the "Remove front panel" and "Remove block diagram" options disabled.

[justACS]

I'd be surprised if the issue was the Conditional Disable Structures, as Actor.lvclass has several of them.  (They are used by the AF Debug Trace library.)  Unless, of course, you removed those as well.  But I've never had an issue building with those structures in place.

[AWilcox]

It wasn't really the Conditional Disable structure itself, it was that the LabVIEW IDE doesn't error check any of the disabled diagrams but the Application Builder does and will spit up errors. Unfortunately the App Builder interacts oddly with Actor Framework projects when reporting build errors, so it always ends up telling you the problem is in ...\vi.lib\ActorFramework\Actor\Actor Core.vi instead of the the actual location of the error. Troubleshooting nightmare when you've got >4000 VIs in the project. Maybe my seek and destroy mission was overkill, but it did kill the problem for good...

[justACS]

That's an... interesting... quirk of the app builder.

As far as overkilling the problem, well, vampires have to be staked, beheaded, and burned to truly guarantee their demise...

[avogadro5]

Try checking "Fast file format" (if EXE not PPL). Why fast file format would fix a "can't save broken VI" build I can't say (because there is practically 0 documentation for this option...), but I have observed it many times.

Edit: as far as debugging to find the break, I would suggest doing a source distribution and then opening files individually in RTE (via open VI reference node) and see which load broken.

[Fedor]

I would occasionally get the dreaded  'broken Actor.vi diagram' build error, which is  indeed impossible to trace, perhaps it is phantom error in my case

What I found to fix the 'broken Actor.vi diagram' build error for me was a following sequence of steps:

1. Close LabVIEW 

2. Open LabVIEW

3. Clear Compiled Object Cache

4. Open LV project

5. Run build application

[IlluminatedG]

Large dynamic dispatch hierarchies have run into this semi-frequently for me. I've had to go so far as nuke the VIObjCache folder in the LabVIEW install folder to fix it. Usually because of bad VIM compiles that somehow happen in NI shipped VIs.