CTL + drag structure edge to envelop items outside

[tshurtz]

At my work we often have structures inside structures several to many layers deep. We try to keep the inner most ones small to keep things to a single screen size overall if possible. But this causes a problem when you have to move an item inside a structure that it currently doesn't fit in. you first have to make room somehow for the structure to get bigger then you can drag the item inside and again shrink the surroundings (the last step can get really ugly when you have multiple layered structures or a lot going on around the outside).

So what if instead of moving the item into the structure you could move the structure around the item. If you could CTL+drag an edge, and instead of trying to push everything around the structure out of the way as it grows, it instead envelops the items you drag over (or spitting them out if you decrease the size). Same basic behaviors as dragging an item into or out of a structure but from the reference frame of the structure instead of the item (or the other way around, not sure how to describe it, kind of like plotting the motion the earth from the suns perspective or the motion of the sun from the earths perspective, they are both fundamentally wrong but both very useful for different tasks).  

     goes to   or vice versa where the only thing that was moved would have been the right side of the inner case structure while holding CTL (or shift or alt or some other equally suitable special key) 

I am guessing that it is not a simple request but would be very helpful to me on at least a daily basis.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I like it... it's outside my typical domains as a LV R&D member, but as a G developer, I like it, so I'll give it my personal kudos.

[wiebe@CARYA]

At my work we often have structures inside structures several to many layers deep. We try to keep the inner most ones small to keep things to a single screen size overall if possible.

Not sure if that helps your case. Layers of nested structures should be avoided. You might benefit from more structural changes.

But reading past that, the idea itself is good. +1

[LukeASomers]

Even without great depth, just having a lot of things going in or out would make this much nicer. Move a single VI with two wires going in and three coming out from outside the loop to inside, and you're talking five rewires.

Can this idea also cover kicking things out of the structure as they are no longer enveloped?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Luke wrote:

> Move a single VI with two wires going in and three coming out

> from outside the loop to inside, and you're talking five rewires.

Moving a single node across the boundary should move the wires in most modern versions of LabVIEW. There have been problems with the feature that allows that movement, but a lot of those have been resolved by LV 2019. It should no longer take 5 rewires -- should take zero.