Create Space in One Direction Only

[Jarrod_S.]

I very commonly use the Ctrl-Drag shortcut across empty block diagram space to create new space on the diagram. When I do this, it is almost ALWAYS intended to just create space in one dimension, horizontally or vertically. If you dare try to create space in both directions at once, this invariably disrupts the arrangement of the diagram. You end up with objects that were nicely aligned being a few pixels off, or worse.

To create space in one direction, I have to very carefully make sure when I Ctrl-Drag that I stay exactly in a straight line, making the process tedious and error-prone. I often have to undo the operation and start over because I'm one pixel off. (One pixel is a lot in LabVIEW!)

It would be very very beneficial to have a similar shortcut that only operates in one direction, or to be able to specify in Tools>>Options to modify the existing behavior, because the default is never what I want.

[Manzolli]

Agree with gsussman.

[BrianKincaid]

As an addon to this when creating space in a case structure it should only effect the case showing.  As-is it moves the code on the hidden cases as well.  This would largely alleviate issues I have using block diagram cleanup on code with cases as well which seems to create space where not needed in hidden cases due to its cleanup algorightm.

[RavensFan]

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BrianKincaid wrote:

As an addon to this when creating space in a case structure it should only effect the case showing.  As-is it moves the code on the hidden cases as well.

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At first I thought I agreed with what you are saying here, but now, not so much.

If you add space in the middle of the visible case, some stuff moves, up or down, and left or right.  That affects the tunnels as well.  But in the not shown cases, the tunnels will of course have moved, wouldn't you want the code that was already laid out relative to those tunnels to move as well?

[TimBotsM]

Well the Idea is old (so is the last post) but here is my take on getting the expansion direction correct.

If you draw a rectangle while holding the ctrl key the and the total height of the rectangle is less than x (10?) pixels (configurable) the rectangle is not black but some other color (say red) and the expansion only happens horizontal.

If you draw the rectangle with a total width of less than x pixels the expansion happens only vertical.

A 2nd option could be that after you draw the rectangle a small window pops up allowing the user to select a expansion direction. A sample of this (I used the run button ) would like this (assuming the user dragged from left bottom to right top):

[Darren]

Available in LabVIEW 2015 and later