LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Top Authors

User

Kudos

Post an idea

When you're looking at the front panel of non-editable VIs, such as VIs in PPLs, many options aren't available. Some of these are still applicable, and would be really useful.

Example 1: If I want to go look at a class definition, normally I could right-click on the class in a front panel and then choose "Show Class Library". However, it isn't available if the VI is locked. My (less-than-ideal) workaround is to "Copy Data", drop the class on a new block diagram, and then I have access to all the normal menu options.

Example 2: The connector pane isn't visible. I often want to look at what is wired where on the connector pane, or to check if inputs are dynamic, but this info isn't visible.

Allow "Replace" of Broken PPL Dependencies

I work with PPLs quite a bit...and sometimes...I just want to rename them.

Libraries that depend on the renamed PPL will then be broken, as expected. Example here:

It would be awesome if I could simply go in, right-click on the missing dependency, and replace it with the newly named one. But...for whatever reason...this option is disabled. Instead, I find myself having to go in and manually replace each individual broken PPL call (VIs, typedefs, etc.). This is unnecessarily time consuming and error prone.

Currently VI's show up in whatever taskbar's monitor they first showed up in and don't follow if they are moved to a different monitor.

This makes my workflow very difficult as I can end up with 18 VI icons (1 each block diagram and front panel) on Monitor 2 and 0 VI icons on Monitor 1. This despite the fact that might have moved have of the VI representations to Monitor 1. The only way to distribute them among the taskbars is to restart windows explorer. This is annoying to have to do even though I have a script to do it (thanks to the hero that posted that process!).

Relatedly, I don't always want all VIs to pop up when I want one to show up. I should be able to bring a block diagram up without having every other VI front panel and block diagram also pop up. Then I have to go and minimize each window individually so I can look at a document or spreadsheet at the same time.

View All (2)

We know that LabVIEW has some magic that it uses for automatic error handling. What if LabVIEW could use such sorcery to enrich the error string flowing on the wire, with information about the originating source of the error -- specifically the VI Reference and GObject UID of the node where the error was introduced. Then a "fancy error dialog of the future" (TM) could utilize those UIDs to navigate directly to the node and highlight it (a visual effect to show which node it is). This behavior could be added to the Simple Error Handler and General Error Handler VIs, and maybe ever there could be a "LabVIEW Gems" vi.lib utility that can extract the VI Reference and GObject UID for use in other, 3rd party tools.

View All (3)

Especially when I use setting windows I normally transfer the actual settings from a setting-cluster or from global variables to multiple local variables and display the current settings in the front panel. After the user edited the settings of course the settings need to be transferred again to global variables or in a setting-cluster. So if multiple global or local variables are used, each variable need to be changed from read to write 1 by 1 by right click and selecting the action from the menu.

So I suggest to implement a function to change it at the same time for all marked variables, similar to property nodes.

The suggested procedure would be:

Mark variables with the mouse by holding "Shift" on the keyboard or drawing a frame
Right click to context menue
Change all to read / write

The feature would be consistent, because it is for example possible to create local variables of multiple controls at once with a similar procedure. (I just don't get in mind why the order is always upside down when I do this)

View All (3)

Problem

I would like to create HTML report of my unit tests run together with information about project code coverage. This can be achieved if the "Generate HTML report" option is checked in Project>>Properties>>Unit Test Framework and when the tests are run via toolbar operation "Run Unit Tests". However, I want to create same HTML report with PROJECT CODE COVERAGE programmatically via "Create Report.VI" or CLI, but the report generated in this way doesn't contain the code coverage information.

Run via Create Report.vi

Run via toolbar

Why This Matters

This functionality can be useful for running unit tests and report creating via custom CLI operation for CI. My scenario is to use the report as an CI artifact with informative value about code coverage.

View All (2)

Format to string

Currently, new sublasses require the user to find the correct parent class in the class tree. In larger projects, this can be really painfull.

I suggest two simple things to improve this very common task:

1. Make the class tree searchable: Put a filter string input above where you can filter the tree by name

2. Add a "Create New Sub-Class from this Class" Item to the context menu in project explorer. This could simpy open the class tree with the matching class already selected. Something like this would also be great for interfaces.

View All (2)

Starting from LV 2023 Q1, the terminals height of some nodes was harmonized to 16 pixels to improve diagram readability by reducing the amount of needed wire bends.

Some candidates for this harmonization were omitted though:

- Data nodes of timed structures (timed loop, timed sequence).

- I think pretty much all of FPGA nodes (IO nodes / methods / properties, FIFO / memory / register / handshake methods, IP integration, high-troughput math nodes, ...).

Example with a Timed Loop:

The idea is to also allow RT and FPGA developments to benefit from this harmonization.

View All (4)

Delete breakpoints from debug window

Hi all,
when I use breakpoints for debugging, I found that the breakpoints sometimes automatical re-appear after they are deleted from the breakpoint manager. I did some tests and found that they only appear again, when there is no other change in that VI, so the VI is not marked with the * in the title, which indicates unsaved changes. They will also not reappear when the VI is saved manually after the breakpoint is deleted.
So the suggestion is that a VI should also be marked as unsaved after deleting a breakpoint.

Regards, Patrick

Hi all,

I' normally using one or multipe queued message handler with a clustered enum (which is saved as Type Def.) and a variant as a basic architecture of my programs. This makes sense and it is relatively easy to search forward and check a program step by step. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to go stepwise back in the program for debugging., especially if there are multiple callers of a function.
Therefore I wish I have a function, where I can search for a single item of this enum Type Def.
I know that there is a possibility to search a text and of course it will find these items, but is also finds all other kind of things labeled the same.

I had a small chat with a engineer of NI already and we had an idea to gerneralize this a little to give it more use cases.
In the current situation, we can search for a:
- Type Def. , but then it will find each item of the enum OR
- text, but then it will find all items labeled with this text.

So here is our idea:
Create a possibility in the search window to combine these 2 search formats with a boolean operator, in our special case, this would be AND. But in other cases it might be also useful to have some other operators.

You are welcome to share any thoughts about it.

Best Regards, Patrick

Problem

I find myself wanting to Ctrl+Drag to add/remove diagram space INSIDE of a structure without actually resizing the structure itself AND without modifying any other frames – I just want to clean up the visible diagram that I am working on.

However, this is not how LabVIEW currently works – the structure itself is also resized, and the space within other frames of the structure are resized as well (outward/inward from the same point as the Ctrl+Drag action), which can mess up both the code in other frames as well as the code outside the structure.

Proposed Solutions

Option 1: Lock Structure Size Add the ability to lock the size of structures (or perhaps only lock them from growing during creating/removing space), so that I can use Ctrl+Drag to create/remove space without impacting the structure and the code around it. This would be similar to "Auto Grow" but would perhaps be an "Allow Grow" or "Lock Size" setting.

Option 2: Modifier Key Use the Shift modifier during Ctrl+Drag and Ctrl+Alt+Drag to NOT resize the containing structure. This would maintain backward compatibility while adding the new functionality.

Why This Matters

When working on complex VIs with multiple frames in structures, it's frustrating to have simple diagram space cleanup operations affect the entire structure and surrounding code. This feature would allow developers to better organize/tidy the code within individual frames without the ripple effect of resizing everything (in other frames and outside the structure).

View All (2)

Clear Probe Watch Window

View All (3)

Static File Reference

Open Class in Runtime

There is a managed way to open a library both in development and in runtime environment via Library.Open method. The same method is available for Class Libraries but without the possibility to open the Class in runtime environment although the Class Library is a specialization of the Library.

Therefore the getting the hierarchy and/or the members of a Class could be performed by terrifying non-managed way in Runtime environment.

It would be nice to get the same functionality from this method as found by the Libraries.

The Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit (DETT) collects hundreds to thousands of data points that indicate memory allocations, queue references, events, and more. The data is always available and often is overwhelming. The only way to make sense of data quickly is to create custom probes that create highlights in the data, however, that is only after you know which VI is worth probing further.

The idea:

Feed all the data normally collected by the DETT about a LabVIEW project directly into Nigel so that it can provide human-friendly suggestions explaining:

Level 1

How often a VI allocates memory in a repeated fashion

The time jitter between different events

VI's that could be good candidates for refactoring

Level 2

Improvements to the code within that VI based on best practices for optimal compiler operations.

This is based off a discussion at GDevCon #6 on September 10th, 2025.

View All (5)

Property node for push button LED color

I want to be able to programmatically change the color of the LEDs on push buttons.

The colors[4] property will change the color of the housing, but not the LED itself.

This push button is one of the controls that is both a control and an indicator rolled into one.

In my particular case, I want to represent a third state. I have a valve that can be open, closed, or in transit.

There are two actuation states of open and close, but three indicator states.

I think making it a property I can control is a powerful solution. Not only will it solve my use case, but I can have all different colors of Booleans without needing to use Customize Control and the Control Editor to modify the colors.

Extra credit request: Can we make just the LED blink? Right now, the blinking property blinks the entire control, but wouldn't it be cool if just the LED blinked? This is what those same two controls look like when blinking:

Maybe it's a new property just for LEDs that's separate from "Blinking". I'd be okay with that if you want to preserve current behavior.

Here are some related Idea Exchange posts related to a tri-state Boolean. They're not quite what I want, but I thought I'd link to them for reference:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Tri-State-Boolean/idi-p/1139952

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Special-LED-control-with-three-states-Default-ON-OFF/idi-p/991307

The zooming feature in LabVIEW was way past due, particularly with the advent of 4k displays (and the rapid degradation of my sight!), but was implemented very poorly. As mentioned in other idea exchanges, the font size handling is awful, and regardless does not address the ancient-looking pixelated block diagram interface. Also the zoom resolution has too many steps for how drastically the view contorts with each step.

The entire system should be overhauled as vector-based so it looks crisp at any zoom level and zooms smoothly between zoom levels. The shining light example of smooth-zooming is Miro which handles text sizes and detail-loading even better than Google Maps.

I am really looking forward to not squinting at pixels, and LabVIEW is literally the last offender I work with.

View All (4)

Filter function to Bookmark Manager

The new debug window in LabVIEW 2025 Q3 automatically expands arrays to show all elements across multiple lines. While this full view can be helpful, it often becomes disruptive during debugging.

I have attached a video that shows a side-by-side comparison. The left side is LabVIEW 2025 Q3, and the right side is LabVIEW 2024 Q3.

As you can see, when an array contains many elements, the new multi-line display consumes a large amount of vertical space on the block diagram. This pushes other probes and data displays down, causing their positions to shift and making it difficult to monitor them. There are many cases where I only need to see that the array contains data, not every single element, and I would prefer the more compact, single-line view.

I propose adding a feature to allow users to select the display mode for arrays in the debug window. It would be ideal to have a toggle or option to switch between the new multi-line view and the classic single-line view, similar to how it worked in LabVIEW 2024 Q3 and older versions.

This would provide the flexibility to choose the most appropriate view for the situation, greatly improving the debugging workflow and the visibility of other data on the diagram.

View All (1)

LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Show more data when looking at non-editable VIs

Allow "Replace" of Broken PPL Dependencies

Make VIs show up in correct monitor's taskbar and be independent of others

Automagically include GObject UID in error messages when running in the editor

Option Change all to read/write for multiple local / global variables

Get code coverage programmatically in Unit Test Framework toolkit

Problem

Why This Matters

Format to string

Make creating subclasses less painfull

Normalize terminals height for timed structures and FPGA nodes

Delete breakpoints from debug window

Extend the search function (Ctrl+F) to get more detailed search results / Search a single item of an enum Type Def.

Add/Remove Diagram Space Inside Structures Without Resizing the Structure

Problem

Proposed Solutions

Why This Matters

Clear Probe Watch Window

Static File Reference

Open Class in Runtime

Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit (DETT) insights provided by Nigel, the AI advisor

Property node for push button LED color

Make block diagram vector-based - for cleaner view on high res monitors, cleaner zooming

Filter function to Bookmark Manager

Add an Option to Display Arrays in a Single Line in the Debug Window