I am sure this is probably not a new idea, but I'll throw it out there anyway.
I often have VIs where there will be a single wire or two that stretch to some far distant part of the diagram (typically horizontally, given the usual left to right flow). For example, maybe I'll have a semaphore reference or something that gets created at the beginning of the VI and isn't needed again until the end so that it can be released. However, these long wires often cross other wires or have to be routed in a somewhat ugly manner. These long wires tend to muddy up the readability since it's not uncommon for them to stretch beyond the width of the screen. (I do try to use subVIs to keep single VIs from getting huge, of course, but it's still not uncommon to exceed a screen width.)
An easy way to make the diagram "prettier", of course, is to use local variables, but those have known performance penalties, and often the data in question really doesn't need to be exposed as a control or indicator in the first place, which is of course a requirement for creating the local variable in the first place.
What's missing, and would be lovely, (in my humble opinion) would be the ability to create an object something like exit/entry point on a traditional schematic: A wire could be attached to a (numbered?) exit point, valid only within that VI, which would automatically create a corresponding re-entry point which could be placed elsewhere on the diagram. In fact, multiple re-entry points for a single exit point should be entirely legal, since this is identical to a branching wire. In any event, this would act exactly like a "normal" visible wire, the data would simply jump from the exit to the re-entry(ies) during normal dataflow.
Now, the one potential restriction I can see a need for is that the "invisible" portion of the wire clearly couldn't be legal across a tunnel/shift register boundary. But for the scenarios I would probably use them for, I think this would be an entirely acceptable restriction, and still has the potential to make certain kinds of VI wiring much less spaghettiful.
Thanks all!
Andy
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