LabVIEW Idea Exchange

I really hate having to dig through a long hierarchy of menus when I know what I want:

Visual Studio (and other MS and non-MS products) have a feature called Intellisense, which is meant to make this easier. Basically, as you type, it pops up a list of matching objects, based on context, so you can quickly select what you want:

It would be nice if LV had a similar feature - click on a property in the property node using the text tool (or Ctrl+click if using the auto-tool) and now you can type in the property name and you will get an Intellisense-like pop-up, which will have all the relevant properties.

Specific features it could have:

1. It should know all the relevant names - full names with the hierarchy (Boolean Text.Font.Color), long names (Mechanical Action) and short names (MechAction). This could probably be similar to how Quick Drop handles shortcuts or they could simply appear as separate items.
2. It should be context sensitive. If the class is Boolean, then there's no need to have Listbox properties in the list.
3. It should match all the properties which include the search string (so "in" on a boolean would match both "Indicator" and "Strings[]") and only them.
4. It should have the ability to use caps for acronyms (e.g. in the above screenshot you could use "BT" instead of "Boolean Text", similar to what appears in this video).
5. It could probably also work on the invoke node, although there it's less needed.
6. It could probably also be used to quickly select a class if you have a class specifier using the same basic mechanism.

This example (LV 2009) shows how useful this could be. You don't need anything installed. Just run the VI and start changing properties.

Caveats:

1. It will only work on the last property in the node.
2. It doesn't have the proper list of names and it doesn't implement all the features in the idea, as this is just a basic example.

Note - this is similar to this idea, but I think that it's much more usable. Also note that the second idea refers to a QDKS which ships with 2010, but that is far from perfect.

When I have an array of clusters and I want to locate the array index where a specific element of the cluster has a certain value, I need to first build an array from the Array of Clusters and then search that to find the Array element I want:

It would be nice (and cleaner and likely faster) if I could wire the Array of Clusters into an unbundle by name function and select String[] to get the array of string element to search.

In addition, if the cluster contained nested clusters, I could access them the same way, using the dot notation alrerady supported.  For example, the unbundle would let me select 'cluster1.subcluster2.String[]' to access the subarray of an element.

Even though I use the tools selection in the automatic mode, many times I need some specific tool not accessible in the automatic mode or force one like "Position/Size/Select". Sometimes, mostly designing User Interfaces (UI) that takes all screen, we got the Tools Palette blocking access to something. Then we move the Tools Palette until it get in front of something else.

The idea is to have an option to have all buttons in the toolbar. Some programs allows you "dock" just dragging the over the tool bar.

Many times we have plenty of space to have all buttons there, if not, we can have a second row of buttons. That will be nice to add more buttons as we wish.

PS: I added a swap button between the foreground and background colors. The idea is explained in this thread Swap Colors in Tools Palette.

I always wanted to have a table or a (Multicolumn) Listbox that allows me to integrate drop down menus (or other elements)

Here's an example from another software (Agilent Benchlink datalogger) which illustrates this quite well:

One could realize something similiar by creating his own Array of cluster, but this is cumbersome and very uncomfortable to change/maintain, mainly because of the difficult selection of all the control frames which are placed one over the other...

Functionality good, layout questionable...             Layout similar to the picture above, but not very flexible (not an array) and "hard to handle"

PROPOSAL:

Add a new type of list control, behaving similar to a Array of cluster control, where different types of already existing controls can be selected as it's elements, and where those controls are placed next to each other without those annoying and real-estate consuming spaces between them

A-T-R

The QControl Toolkit is a fantastic library of tools for developing reusable UI components. I think they are a great alternative to XControls. Not only does the QControl Toolkit provide me the framework for developing my own QControls, but it also ships with some fully functional QControls, my favorite probably being the tree with checkboxes.

I think QControls are useful enough for all LabVIEW users that they should be part of the LabVIEW core product instead of an add-on toolkit.