DIAdem Idea Exchange

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3D axis diplay on VIEW

I often develop tests/algorithms by saving the raw data that I'd like to analyse and then working on the algorithm afterwards.

Say I have a TDMS file with a channel inside a group. I can open that TDMS file and visualise that data, but what I'd really like to do is test my new algorithm with it (essentially unit testing).

I could write a quick VI that loads that particular channel from the TDMS and passes it to my algorithm, but wouldn't it be quicker if I could drag and drop the channel from DIAdem directly into LabVIEW as a constant or similar? I can already drag and drop the data from the DIAdem data portal into various views, so why not into LV?

There's already a degree of logic for drag / drop within LabVIEW, as you can drop paths into constants.

Perhaps this should have been a LV idea...

Add the ability to decode relative paths for video files within View and TDV files AND make it the default setting. Adding an option box to the "Select Video File" dialog to allow absolute or relative path decode. Also have the system recognize a relative path (i.e. ".\video.avi"). This may require a new TDV-Path variable. This allows moving large video/data views to networked based folders allowing other engineers/customers to review/manipulate the data.

When working in DIAdem SCRIPT, it is often necessary to work on more than one file at once. The way this is implemented at the moment is with tabs:

However, it can be quite tedious to switch back and forth between 2 scripts for things like copy/pasting, comparing code or simply editing code on 2 files concurrently.

My suggestion would be for a SCRIPT editor with split screen functionality, roughly like this:

With many users working with widescreens today, this would better make use of screen real-estate.

I'd like to propose a few improvements to the zoom functionality in DIAdem VIEW that are sorely missing usability-wise:

Vertical band zoom: This would allow one to zoom in on a specific part of the y axis without touching the x axis. We have the horizontal, why not vertical?
Sticky zoom button: When I want to zoom in to a specific part of a graph in successive steps, I have to click on the zoom button each time. It would be great to be able to click on it once to activate the zoom tool and to be able to zoom several times. (Not sure what the best mechanism is, but maybe a click with modifier key? Ctrl+click on zoom button keeps it active?)
Zoom stack with undo: Following on from point 2, when I zoom in in successive steps, it would be nice to be able to go back to the previous zoom level. Right now I can only do a generic zoom out or cancel all zooming. It could simply be an extra button in the zoom palette that goes back up one level in the zoom stack (like an undo. It could even be integrated into a more generic undo functionality if it ever comes about.)

I think that for points 2 and 3 there are several ways this could be done. I think the focus should be on usability. The user needs to be able to navigate the data as quickly and as efficiently as possible and the current zoom implementation is clearly impractical for many users.

Script Interface Conveniences

I've been spoiled by using other scripting environments lately, and thought I'd suggest a few features that I feel would make scripting in DIAdem a little more convenient:

Check for un-dimmed variables when Option Explicit is turned on
Check for unused dimmed variables (very helpful for cleanup)
Check for variables that are used, but never initialized to a value

I feel these would be really useful for identifying and fixing bugs (especially for inexperienced script writers) and cleaning up old scripts, while not requiring major changes to the interface (although they could get really annoying if implemented incorrectly, may be difficult to implement in the back end, and may even require manual compilation to detect?).

Thanks!

-Josh

DIAlog Docking in Data Portal

We've suggested this in person, but thought I'd finally post it to the site.

Despite it being called the Data Portal, we'd like to have the capability of docking DIAlogs of any purpose into the data portal as new tabs alongside 'Structure' and 'List' views.

Non Modal DIAlogs tend to cover some portion of the active window, so tend to get in the way and end up being closed and re-opened by the user despite our resizing and overlapping of the Data Portal. Allowing docking into the Data Portal would allow for convenient sizing (REPORT/VIEW tabs are already re-sized around the data portal) and movement with the application from one screen to another.

The primary example of functionality advancement for us would be our 'Page Browser', which is much like the View/Report 'manage' function, but works for both, allows filtering on both, allows for convenient rearranging of sheets to any other position, and can remain up at all times so users can simply jump to or flip to sheets without re-opening the 'manage' function or slowly tabbing/scanning through all sheets.

Obviously, it's up to you to decide the implementation...having some sort of tab manager at the very top or bottom that switches the 'Data Portal' out entirely for a 'Sheet Portal' and other custom DIAlog options & names could also work, or some other implementation entirely, but as the other tab manager already exists (but only ever contains 2 tabs), I feel would likely be less of a massive UI overhaul.

-Josh

VIEW Contour CCN Value

Not having the DataFinder index anything except NI's folders by default on install would be extremely convenient. Optionally, this could also be a setting chosen on install.

Each of our users who installs the application immediately has every MS Excel file from their 'My Documents' folder indexed, which wouldn't really hurt anything except that most of these MS Excel files aren't true 'data' files. In my experience, most Excel files rarely store anything as simple as what could be stored in text-tab delimited format, so aren't easily or usefully indexed, so seems to confuse the DataFinder as it is unable to close them automatically once opened.

The results is dozens to hundreds of Excel.exe processes running in the background, until the machine runs out of memory or files, so we have had to make a point to disable all datafinder indexing on each and every install. We've scripted this process into our standard configuration, but if the user doesn't contact us right away, they suffer greatly from performance issues and blame DIAdem (rightly so).

I suspect that anyone who wants to use the DataFinder would want to do some manual configuration to specific folders, dataplugins, times of day to index, etc. which would make requiring setup perfectly acceptable to users who want to use it (and not waste resources for those that don't).

-Josh

I would like to be able to generate text tables within my report generated form LabVIEW using the Express vi DIAdem report...currently the only way to do this is create a script. This seems to be an overcomplicated way of doing a relatively benign operation and makes the tool very cumbersome.

Whilst you're at it, labeling the y-axis of a graph also seems to be over complicated from within LabVIEW. Maybe I'm just too used to easy programming with LabVIEW! But programming isn't my main activity...

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Scalable Help window

Currently, whenever you open a block diagram in DIAdem DAC, it closes anything that is already open. This is inconvenient if you want to open two separate .DAC files for comparison, copy&paste, prototyping, etc. and especially when you want to reference an example, it tries to close whatever block diagram you have open and may still be working on.

Having multiple tabs like in VIEW, REPORT, and SCRIPT would definitely improve the user experience. Alternatively, we could have it minimized somewhere or have it selectable from the Window menu as long as it allows you to keep multiple block diagrams loaded at the same time.

Kentaro Yamashｉta

Programmatic copy function

Diadem currently has a copy function for curves within the user interface, as shown below:

However, there is no copy function within the scripting api. This means to duplicate a curve programmatically multiple functions. one for each of the properties in the curve, need to be called as shown below:

Dim oMyReportObj, oMyNew2DCurve,

Set oMyReportObj = Report.ActiveSheet.Objects.Item(1)

Set oMyNew2DCurve = oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Add(e2DShapeLine, oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Item(oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Count).Name &"_copy")
oMyNew2DCurve.Shape.XChannel.Reference = oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Item(oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Count-1).Shape.XChannel.Reference
oMyNew2DCurve.Shape.YChannel.Reference = oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Item(oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Count-1).Shape.YChannel.Reference
oMyNew2DCurve.Shape.Settings.Line.Width = eLineWidth0100

...

It would be far easier if there were a call to copy a curve directly:

Dim oMyReportObj, oMyNew2DCurve,

Set oMyReportObj = Report.ActiveSheet.Objects.Item(1)

Set oMyNew2DCurve = oMyReportObj.Curves2D.Copy(1)

When selecting a matrix structure set of channels for the z-matrix, DIAdem currently allows a user to select the first channel when the triplet channel radio button is chosen, and then locks that first entry as the first Z channel in the z-matrix. When the user wants to select the last channel in the z-matrix, they then have to click the "..." box to the right of the greyed out box that has the first Z channel in the z-matrix displayed. I was going to suggest that R&D work on the ability to chose channels that are not consecutively arranged within the data portal. I feel it would be more intuitive to hold down CTRL and select the Z channels that make up the z-matrix.

Cheers!

Shawn S.

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DIAdem Idea Exchange

3D axis diplay on VIEW

Drag and drop - DIAdem data to LabVIEW

Allow relative paths for video files within TVD files.

Split-screen in DIAdem SCRIPT

DIAdem VIEW zoom improvements

Script Interface Conveniences

Allocation of page IDs in VIEW / printing options

DIAlog Docking in Data Portal

VIEW Contour CCN Value

Default DataFinder Indexing Disabled

Link Between Pages in a PDF Report

LabVIEW DIAdem Report Express - 2D Text Tables, Y-axis Labels

Code completion across different script files

Ejecutables de conjunto scripts (.exe)

Scalable Help window

Allow multiple tabs/sheets/workspaces in the DAC block diagram page

Programmatic copy function

Contour Plot Matrix Structure Channel Selection Modification

Implement .Net framework instead of vbscript

Separate Diadem Clipboard from system Clipboard