Selection of Items on BD or FP needs to be Easier!

[JackDunaway]

Currently, it's a crapshoot when you drag an ant trail selection box around items on your FP or BD. It's truly an art to become good at selecting objects in LabVIEW - we all learn "hot spots" to place our selection rectangles, and we all heavily rely on the "Shift+Click" method of adding or removing objects from our selection. Below is an example of what actually might be selected when dragging a selection box:

All horizontal wires were selected down to "ABCDEF", even though just a very small portion of the visible wire was inside the selection box. It's not intuitive to try to not select wire that is hidden behind the Unbundle.

I propose a method that mimics selection in some graphics editing and CAD programs: the idea of "Enclosed" and "Inclusive" selections. An Enclosed selection is made by dragging the mouse from L to R. This operation selects only the objects THAT ARE COMPLETELY ENCLOSED by the selection box, ignoring objects that are partially outside the selection (the red arrow is not part of the BD, it merely represents the motion of the cursor):

Alternatively, if you drag your mouse from RIGHT to LEFT for a selection box, you select every single object that is fully or even partially contained within the selection box:

Voila! Selection is now a TAUGHT SCIENCE instead of a LEARNED ART!

[JackDunaway]

Mike, true, but I need to make a new idea that points out the flaw in that implementation. Stay tuned...

[JackDunaway]

For those of you who have "stayed tuned" to my last comment, I finally made a new idea yesterday. The flaw consists of selecting the midpoint of a wire, where that midpoint is actually covered by the node itself (whether that node be a Unbundle by Name like above, or a Property Node, or Local Variable...) If you attempt to drag a box around only the node, you end up selecting the wire that it covers if it is covering the midpoint of that wire.

The new idea should fix this selection snafu.

[JackDunaway]

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Mr. Mike wrote:

FYI: There is a tiny bit of sanity to selection.  Wires are selected if their center is included in the selection box.

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Just found this instance that does not even follow the "rule" - try creating a local and selecting only the local without selecting the wire underneath:

It's more of a bug - or at least undesirable behavior - but I guess it still falls within the realm of support for this Idea.

[TimmTheEnchanter]

Since I'm not a newbie to LabVIEW anymore, I would appreciate the implementation of this idea.  However, since I'm not a big CAD user, the directionality would not give me the "intuitive" feel.  I would probably just think LabVIEW was being inconsistent.

Then again, I understand a lot of Mechanical Engineers are using LabVIEW in academia, so they are probably already familiar with this CAD functionality.  First time I used CAD, though, it utterly confused me.

Personally, I would prefer holding down a keyboard button in order to define "inclusive" or "exclusive" selections.  For instance, holding down "ctrl+shift" or "alt" to mean inclusive, and not holding anything down to mean exclusive.

[ouadji]

Like AutoCAD ... very very good idea !

[X.]

I did not Kudo the idea as I found it too limited, but eventually forgot about it and wrote up a slightly more general one here. Not sure whether it will turn into a duplicate, but my hope is that Jack's request can be expanded to the features I am suggesting too.

[Oakromulo]

Jack,

In my last NI WEEK I've talked to a lot of high-profile LV managers to seriously encourage developing this AutoCAD-like feature. It would be really, really useful.

Infinite Kudos!

[Oakromulo]

Jack,

In my last NI WEEK I've talked to a lot of high-profile LV managers to seriously encourage developing this AutoCAD-like feature. It would be really, really useful.

Infinite Kudos!

[X.]

OK, good. But it is JUST that idea or does it expand on it (e.g. as suggested in my post above)?