VI feature to not have to create an icon for the VI, but instead make the VI name appear on block diagrams

[Jimmy_Reumuth]

Creating a decent icon could take longer than writing the VI itself. Additionally, creating a decent icon requires graphic art skills most people don't have. Furthermore, for most VIs there's no obvious choice of a good icon. Often, the most practical thing to do is just put text on the icon.

 

I propose adding a feature to VIs where you can quickly apply an option or feature to have the VI name appear in some way on the block diagram to represent the VI instead of having to create an icon.

This is not meant to replace the use of icons on VIs altogether. Icons are good for localization and can give a professional look to VIs at the API level. This would be used for cases where localization isn’t an issue, it’s not worth while to take the time to create an icon, and text would likely be more clear than a graphical icon anyway.

 

There’s many ways this could be implemented. Here are some possibilities:

1. VIs could have an option to specify that an icon containing the VI name appears on block diagrams. See Figure 1. The VI icon would be created and managed for you and update if you change the name of the VI. You would not be able to manually edit the icon.
2. VIs could provide a way to generate an icon for the VI that contains the name of the VI. You could then use the icon editor to further edit the VI icon. You could regenerate this icon if you changed the name of the VI.
3. Currently, on a block diagram you can select Label and Terminals as visible items for a VI. The Label shows the VI name, and the Terminals show the terminals instead of the icon. VIs could have an option so that the Label and Terminals are always on the VI on block diagrams. See Figure 2. When using this option, the VI wouldn’t have an icon you could edit or view.

With implementations 1 and 2, if the VI is part of a library (or project) the top of the icon would have a banner for the library in case two VIs in different libraries have the same name. See Figure 3. The banner could be the library name, or there could potentially be a way associate a custom icon template with the library to specify a graphical library banner.

 

With implementations 1 and 2, it’s possible that there isn’t enough room to fit the VI name you want on the icon, or least not at a reasonable font size. One way of dealing with this is there could also be a way to specify a custom name instead of using the VI name. If the VI name doesn’t fit, you could specify an abbreviated name to use instead.

 

Another way to deal with VI names not fitting on an icon is to allow VI icons to be of size other than 32x32. This would likely be a separate feature you could use with any VI icon.

 

I’d appreciate feedback on which of the different implementations you like, on how important it is to allow icons of sizes other than 32x32 for this feature, or on any other aspect of this idea or other directions you’d like to consider.

[tst]

I like suggestion 2. It's relatively simple and should be implementable without a major hassle. I think the way it can be implemented is that you have a button on the toolbar next to the icon which would generate a text icon based on the VI name.

It will use some brains to make the display reasonable (remove vowels, cut the text after N chars, etc.). I would suggest that it does NOT make the font smaller.

If memory serves, Mark Balla's icon editor posted to LAVA way back had this feature where it removed the vowel and crammed letters together if you had many of them.

As for icons being more than 32x32, that's a good suggestion in general (and was part of the reason for the zoom feature I suggested here), but I assume that will require a considerably larger change in the code.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 4 kudos within 4 years after posting will be automatically declined.