Programmatic Control of Grid Alignment Properties

[Kosta]

I am not happy when I inherit legacy code where VIs have inconsistent alignment grid options, as shown in the image below.

My team has coding standards we follow, and those standards include alignment grid options. It is labor-intensive to change alignment grid options on legacy VIs because you have to do it by hand, and clicks quickly add up. I wish I could automate such changes.

I’d like to see a few new properties to expose settings available in the editor, as shown below.

These properties need to support both read and write.

[wiebe@CARYA]

I'll just repeat this, as it seems to be ignored:

As an alternative, NI could let us in on how the options dialog does this.

That dialog is mostly VIs at work (calling it and handling the results is not, AFAIK), so there is a change it can be done already. It's just that we don't get to see all pieces of the puzzle.

The options dialog are normal VIs, with (pw protected) diagrams. The NI VIs can set these properties, and so could we, probably.

Spoiler

If we knew how to work the VI tagsets\propertybags… And if we had access to them. They might be provided by LabVIEW calling the dialog...

Just saying that in stead of adding two properties, it might be easier for everyone to just provide the information...

[AristosQueue (NI)]

The settings for grid size on VI for are not in the Tools>>Options dialog. They are in VI Properties dialog. And the original post mistakenly thought grid enable/disable was a per VI setting. The Tools >> Options discussion is irrelevant to this thread.

[wiebe@CARYA]

@AQ: Ah, thanks for clearing that up. So +1 for adding properties for that.

Isn't the Tools>Options discussion still relevant for setting the grid enable/disable  (Show front panel grid) option?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

It may be a valid idea, but it is off-topic here.

[Kosta]

I was only interested in VI properties. Most settings from Tools > Options are stored in LabVIEW.ini file, and you can programmatically control that file using VIs mentioned on slide linked from this page - search for lvconfig.llb.

[Kosta]

I am delighted by the status change to "in development"!

[wiebe@CARYA]

>It may be a valid idea, but it is off-topic here.

It's an alternative solution to the proposed solution for enabling the grid. Providing a VI i.s.o. a new property might be easier. Something we could have right now, i.s.o. in LabVIEW 202x.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

You're missing the point. I can't think of any way to explain any more than I have. So I'll simply end with "No."

[raphschru]

I think wiebe@CARYA is talking about providing a generic way of managing VI properties (e.g. grid size, default command style, of course NOT "Grid Enable" since this is a global LV property) through a simple set of VIs (e.g. "Get VI Property.vi" / "Set VI Property.vi").

Given the property name, we could get/set its value with a variant. If we try to set a value with the wrong data type or out of range, the property is simply not affected, and the VI returns an error (just developing the idea...).