Default Icon on New VI Should Have Separate Layers

[RavensFan]

Inspired by Ray's idea Allow user-defined default icon, (which I supported) it seems that since the several recent versions of LabVIEW have incorporated separate layers as part of the icon editor, the default icon for LabVIEW should be broken up into different layers as well.  Perhaps 3, the black box/white background template, the VI oscilloscope glyph, and the numeric value that is related to the "Untitled #.VI" VI name.  Right now, it is a single flat layer.

I thought this idea might have already existed, but didn't quite find it.  However, I came across Yenknip's idea Choose Icon's default layers.  What is interesting is that that idea makes it sound like the VI's are already broken up into different layers.  I don't know how he got it that way as all of my new VI's have a single flat "VI Icon" user layer.

 

[Ray.R]

Kudos buddy.

Seems like this and the thread provided by AritosQueue are going to be popular. 

Spoiler

I think a message is being sent.. 

Cheers!   I mean... kudos..

[JB]

What would the benefits be ?

Currently, when creating your own icon, you need to hit the Delete button (X) in the Layers tab only once to delete the default icon. If the default icon was splitted to several layers, more clicks would be needed in most cases (100% for me).

Because all my icons use a template, splitting the default icon to "1 template + 1 layer" wouldn't change anything. But I'm against "1 template + >1 layers".

[RavensFan]

1 template + 1 layer would be fine.  The benefit is that after deleting that 1 layer, you don't now have to go and pick the template of the black box to begin starting to design the new template you want.

In reality, this idea isn't about trying to save a couple of button clicks.  It just seems like after improving the icon editing functions to be able to have multiple layers, the default icon should have embraced them and demonstrated how they should be used, rather than continuing with the old school format of a single flat icon and ignoring all the features that the newer icon format provides.

It's also kind of like still having examples that are using stacked sequence structures instead of flat sequence structures.  It would be good if LabVIEW modeled what can be done as improvements have been made rather than continuing to use the old methods.

[fabric]

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@RavensFan wrote:

In reality, this idea isn't about trying to save a couple of button clicks.  It just seems like after improving the icon editing functions to be able to have multiple layers, the default icon should have embraced them and demonstrated how they should be used, rather than continuing with the old school format of a single flat icon and ignoring all the features that the newer icon format provides. 

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Good speech. You managed to turn me around from "this doesn't offer much benefit" to "this encourages best practices".

Kudos for 1 template and 1 layer, and bonus kudos if the layer can be switched OFF just like the global option to "Use numbers in icons of new VIs", although that last comment probably belongs in Ray's idea...

[ToeCutter]

Cold from me as I'm assuming this will add another few K to each of my icons unless I explicitly delete the layers (more work).

[RavensFan]

"Few K"  ???  Are you talking about kilobytes?  Memory size?   Icons on different layers don't take up very much memory.  An icon is only 32 x 32.  So one byte per pixel is 1 kB.

[Manzolli]

When I start editing a new VI icon, I usually draw a Filled Rectangle with black border and white interior, an easy way to create an empty icon. By the way, in the LV 2013 the Tip Strip on the icon editor palette is improperly “Tools” instead of “Filled Rectangle”.

How about this idea: LabVIEW creates the default icon, as it does nowadays. At first time you open the icon editor for a new VI, it replaces the default LabVIEW icon for a one you design. As an option, when you want, the current behavior can be activated.