VI Browser node for Reusable and most used labview files

[AnandkumarSP]

Using "Select a VI" option, we constantly browse to a set of reusable/project folders at different location. 

Getting vi's from Project folders is easy with project explorer window but this is not the case for reusable.

It will be better if we have an optional node in LabVIEW Palette that helps us in browsing LabVIEW files from a set of folders. 

Documenting my suggestion below:

 1. Consider the "VI Browser" is our required node as shown below.

 2. On Right clicking the node, i should populate the folders and subfolders as pull right menu name [Assume that VI Browser node will get the folder paths from a ini file similar to LabVIEW.ini]. And LabVIEW files as the elements for the menu. Thus the menu can be customized from ini file.

 3. Upon selection of an element, the node should get replaced with the vi or ctl as below.

This kind of feature prevent us working with windows explorer for browsing vi's in the middle of programming. Also adding this to Quick drop will further reduce our effort of browsing.

[jcarmody]

Use VIPM to create and install a package of your reuseable code.

[AnandkumarSP]

jcarmody,

Just placing the reusable folders inside <LV>\user.lib will also update palette. But our company maintains reusables in repository and so we will get updates only from our repository. Packaging our reusable and installing it, will create a copy of existing reusable from our library. In case any bug fix is done we wont be updated if we go with VIPM installed package. 

One option we have is creating mnu files that link to our repository reusable. But workspace configuration to sync files from repository differs from station to station. Only those who know how to create and customize mnu files can alone do it. And if any new vi's are available, mnu files need to be updated.

So the idea here is whatever maybe the reusable folde,r this node is capable of browsing those vi's. If the folder is updated with new files we don't need to bother about it.

Thanks for your suggestion.

[Darren]

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