A menu item to show all hidden cluster elements at once

[altenbach]

If several cluster elements are hidden and we want to unhide them all, it gets tedious. For each elements, we need to:

1. Right-click the cluster...
2. advanced...
3. show hidden element...
4. select desired element...   (At this time we have moved the mouse about 500 pixels to the right in steps 2-4!)
5. click outside the cluster to deselect everything (because now the cluster AND the element are selected and we cannot immediately start again with step #1).
6. start with step #1 for the next hidden element. Tedious!

I suggest that there should be a top entry <All Elements> (or more correctly <All Hidden Elements>, but that seems unnecessarily bulky and does not really add more clarity), to unhide all hidden elements at once.

Here is how it could look like:

 

Idea summary: There should be a menu item to show all hidden cluster elements with one simple step (see picture).

Thanks!

[Darin.K]

FYI - In the Edit Menu of the Control editor there is an option to Show Hidden Controls and Indicators.  Gets the job done in one fell swoop. 

[altenbach]

Thanks, Good to know.

(However, firing up and later closing down the control editor is a bit more than one swoop total. :D)

[Darin.K]

I have it configured to launch the control editor with a double click so it is at most 1.5 swoops, more like 1.25.

[Manzolli]

Good to know that there is already a place with this option. I like to find the command I need in all intuitive places that it can be. Find a command, used once in a while, is sometimes hard. When you find it, sometimes, you think “should not be here” or “should be also in that place”. For these reasons kudos!

[AristosQueue (NI)]

You can hide individual elements of a cluster? I had no idea. Why would you do that? What's the goal? If it is just a debug panel, this doesn't seem like it has much value. If it is an actual UI panel, wouldn't you be unbundling your data cluster to display the data that you wanted into whatever controls layout your panel has, removing the cluster boundaries? Sorry... this is a use case that I've never wanted, and I'm surprised the functionality exists, so I'm curious how it has value for you.

[altenbach]

I often use cluster as controls or indicators. Sometimes, the cluster contains additional data of no interest to the operator in one particular FP instance, thus these elemens should not show. They would just clutter the UI.

For indicators, unbunding into individual indicators or rebundling into a simpler cluster involves significantly more code and complicates the diagram. (similar problems for controls).

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Hm. Interesting. Thanks.

[altenbach]

I typically use arrays of such clusters. In the example in the picture, the checkbox is redundant for the indicator and thus can be hidden.

(Forming a new cluster with fewer elements or building a table requires significantly more code. The cluster here is a boolean, an enum, and a DBL)

Of course this would be even more important if we would ever get my biggest LabVIEW UI wish. 😄

[fabric]

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@AristosQueue (NI) wrote:

You can hide individual elements of a cluster? I had no idea. Why would you do that? What's the goal? 

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I'm amazed sometimes at the ratio of what you don't know to what you do know! It's larger than expected... 

I use hidden cluster elements all the time for UI design. Favourite use case: Dynamically showing/hiding UI elements in a finite list. Just drop a bunch of controls in a wrapper cluster and set Autosizing: Arrange Vertically. Has to be the easiest way to achieve pop-open sections:

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Fabric: The gaps in my knowledge are mostly front panel stuff. I don't have a lot of cause to build complex UIs. The few I've done have mostly been for myself, so the final bit of polish isn't there (my personal validate-my-VIs-before-checking-them-into-Perforce has a UI that "only it's author could use"). And when I do build UI VIs, I tend not to use arrays or clusters on any end-user-visible panel. I ususally find myself wanting custom layouts (like different cluster elements on different tabs/subpanels, for example), or not liking the bounding boxes, or something like that. So since I don't tend to work on those features and since I don't tend to need them as a user, the front panel is the part of LabVIEW that I know the least.