Seconds in milliseconds or minutes

[Evelin12]

Hi,

Once channel indicates time in seconds. I would like to convert the seconds in minutes or in milliseconds. Do I need to create two more channels for minutes and ms and how can I do the conversion? Regards.

[StathPol · Accepted solution]

Use the calculator on the toolbar..create a new channel and then enter the formula you need (multiply by 1000 to get the ms or vise versa)..you have the time as you want to calculate it.

[Brad_Turpin · Accepted solution]

Hi Evelin,

As long as you have the channel unit string set to "s" for your loaded channel, I'd recommend you use the built-in DIAdem unit management features to easily switch to milliseconds or minutes.  The easiest way to engage that would be to click on the "Unit" channel property in the Data Portal for that channel and choose the new time unit, then select the "Convert" button.

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer

National Instruments

[Otmar · Accepted solution]

Hello Evelin,

Brad already answered your question, but I like screen shots, so I added more detailed instructions with screen shots.

First of all, we may have to add "sec" (your unit name) to the DIAdem Unit Management system. This is a one-time effort, and easy:

In the Data Portal, select the time channel. Then, in the property view below, click on the unit line. A little icon icon labeled "..." will appear. Click on that icon.

Once you have clicked on the icon, the following dialog may appear (this step is skipped if "sec" was already defined as a unit previously):

If the dialog appears, click "Yes" and the following dialog  called "Add Unit" will pop-up:

Select "Time" as your measurement quantity (or unit). For the rest of the dialog, set it as shown below:

You have not told DIAdem that "sec" and is an alternative way of writing "s" - which is the SI unit for seconds. You won't have to do that again unless you install DIAdem on a different computer. DIAdem has now learned and will remember.

Click OK, and you have done that step.

The next step is to click on the "..." button to your unit again, which now brings up the following dialog:

Since DIAdem now knows that "sec" and "s" are the same thing, it will show you the current unit of your data channel, along with all defined alternatives, including "ms" and "min". Simply pick your unit here, and then click "Convert" as shown in the screen shot below. DIAdem will automatically convert the unit of your channel to the new unit you picked. This happens in memory only, DIAdem will not change your file, unless you save the data file in the NAVIGATOR panel.

You can go back and change the unit here as often as you want, DIAdem will take care of the conversation formula automatically, since it knows the math behind every conversion. This works for about 300 different engineering units (temperature, speed, torque, etc.), not just time.

I hope this helps,

     Otmar