Alter the application of Shift key presses to restrict motion whether pressed before or after dragging an object

[Thoric]

Whilst developing code I often need multiple copies of a subvi on my block digram. I create my duplications by click-dragging with CTRL pressed, which creates a copy. To make sure the copy is aligned horizontally with the original you can press the Shift key as well to enforce motion in one direction only (horizontal / vertical). However, this only works if you think to press the Shift key before you start the drag operation. Pressing it afterwards has no effect.

Furthermore, once a motion has begun, the chosen direction is the only allowable direction the object can be moved in. In other programs it's quite typical to restrict the motion to the direction of most linear travel from the origin, so moving back out to the right would restrict motion to horizontal, but then moving the mouse to somewhere above the origin would restrict the movement to vertical only.

I'd like to see these modifications introduced, purely to improve the development experience.

Note: This idea is the consequence of this original (flawed) idea

[Intaris]

This one I can kudos having not understood the need for the original idea.

[RandyP]

I think a shorter way to explain this (for those who have it available to them) is, "Make it work like MS Visio". Of course, with Visio, if you Click+Shift+drag (in that order) you actually get a rectangle zoom-in, and of course there's no zoom in LabVIEW (sigh). So I guess it's not exactly like Visio... but close.

Not to say that one should base one's product on someone else's, but hey, if it works...

[Intaris]

Having never used Visio, I have no idea what "like MS Visio" would be like.......

As to the idea: I very often try to shift-control-drag (in that order) objects on my BD to create an aligned copy only to have it move int he wrong direction.  As a consequence, a shift-control-drag is often rapidly followed by a control-Z and a second shift-control-drag.  For this reason alone, I have to kudos this idea

In another Post Altenbach has linked to the list of keyboard shortcuts for LV and it states that a "Control-Shift-Drag" will make an aligned copy whereas it's actually a "Shift-Control-Drag"..... I've been doing it wrong all these years......

[jmorris]

Exactly what Intaris said about following this type of move with a control-Z because my mouse accidentally wiggled in the wrong axis before I started really moving the control, whether it be a copy or the original.  Definitely kudos!

[muks]

Wow!!I never use shift+cntrl +drag since it moves in the chosen direction only. Not anymore!!!