Unbundle by Name: Optionally Dim Items Already Unbundled

[Mr._Jim]

Since it was introduced, I have zealously adopted the "In Place Element Structure."  In addition to its warm-fuzziness to those with memory usage paranoia, I am a huge fan of the manner in which the "Unbundle / Bundle Elements" terminals assist in keeping track of which elements have already been used by dimming them.  Granted, it's intrinsically necessary due to the way the structure functions, but I also think it's generally helpful.

I think it would be great if this dimming functionality was available on the plain old "Unbundle by Name" function.  Since you wouldn't want that functionality all the time, I suggest that it might be an option selectable from the context menu.  (Right click on the function and select "Dim Items Already in Use" or some such option)

While I'm at it, I might as well suggest the same for the "Bundle by Name" function as well.

[Mr._Jim]

dthor, I completely agree; the idea is now not to prohibit the user from doing anything, but to simply provide an optional visual cue.  I often use two or more of the same element per function instance, myself.

Heck, if I could edit the title to reflect the end result of the discussion, I would.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> Wait... it's smiling, but is its thumb pointing down?!  That's not intuitive.

That's his finger tool clicking on the Unbundle node. Quick art... you get what you pay for. I promise we'll have professionals do the animation. Do you think it's ok to require a high quality graphics card for LabVIEW's editor environement?

(Yes, I'm still joking. I'm in a good mood today... appologies if this clearly tounge-in-cheek line of comments bothers anyone. I promise to return to my usual dark "that would never work" commentary soon. If you want to help, send me some really nasty bug reports. That's always depressing.)

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> Heck, if I could edit the title to reflect the end result of the discussion, I would.

Use the "Report to a Moderator" link and request that they edit the title to reflect the discussion. We don't let people change this directly because then you get people kudos'ing an idea and then the idea changes to something they actually wouldn't kudos. In this case, I think the idea has been up a short enough time and there was pretty quick consensus about going a different direction. Let the moderator know and he/she will generally fix small tweaks like that.

[GregSands]

I hesitated in giving this a kudos because of the suggested restriction ot behavior like the IPES, but if the intention is to still allow elements to used more than once, then I'm much happier about it.

[Mr._Jim]

Yep, that's now the idea.

[X.]

What about bundling by name duplicates? This is just as much a source of debugging nightmare.

As far as introducing a "Mr Paper Clip" in LabVIEW, that makes perfect sense... I  would suggest giving the user the choice between a bunch of animations. And make sure that sucks all the CPU if possible.

[Mr._Jim]

X, tell us how you really feel! 

(While the paperclip idea sounds awesome, you're ten days late in suggesting it.)

[X.]

It seems I am more like 4 years late in the discussion.

I was looking for  an idea for a warning when an element is bundled twice (or more) in a cluster, as I fell victim of this oversight once more.

What I really think is that your original suggestion belongs to "do not waste time with these niceties", while what I do support (the last sentence in your idea) belongs to the "why don't we have this feature already" class.