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When I use dialogs it happens that I have to edit a dialog (SubVI) and its caller at the same time (an example is attached). Suppose both VIs are opened. If I want to test a caller and if I run it a dialog (Sub VI) will also run. It's not possible to control any of them anymore.

The shortcut CTRL+. does not work. Emergency VI aborter neither. The most popular Microsoft key combination CTRL+ALT+DELETE works, of course. Fortunately LabView recovery procedure also works reliably.

 

 LabView development environment should allow to abort any VI: modal or non-modal window. Project explorer window should always be available.

 

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I like the glyphs in the project explorer window that indicate the scope of each vi.  I would find it extremely helpful if glyphs were added to indicate a VI's override status.  (Must override, overrideable - normal dynamic dispatching, and not overridable - static dispatching)
Add a Master Tab Page for those controls / Indicators that need to be accessible from all Tabs.  We could designate a place - say across the top or along the Right - where all Master controls / Indicators would reside. Also a good place to put Company or project logos.  The master tab should be defaulted to Transparent to inherit the other Tab colors.
In a project a lot of times I want to know all the VIs that are using a particular VI. I may want to open all these Vis up or do a replace all on that VI with a different one. It would be nice if after I right click and choose "find callers" I can do more than just jump to one of the VIs that I double click on.

A spell check button right on the LabVIEW toolbar would be grate great. Since the technology already exists in the VI Analyzer, I don't see this as being a huge developmental effort.

 

Yes, I know that a dedicated analysis configuration file can be made and launched easily, but it's not the same, and the Analyzer takes a while to load.

I am sometimes working on minor details in the front-panel, to create Virtual Instrumentation

of good quality.  In these situations I have often wished I could have zoomed in when doing this work,

to more easily handle and move around the small objects.

Martin

When you drop a numeric constant on the BD, you get an I32. When you drop a Numeric Control on the FP, you get a DBL. I suggest consistency between the two, or even better, have an environment setting that allows a user-defined default data representation.

 

NumericConstantControlInconsistency.png

Warning: You are about to close xx probe windows. Would you like these probes available next time the BD is opned? Yes/No/Cancel. Could then have a restore probes option.

 

Or maybe even allow probes to stay open when BD is closed. Often, I close the BD by accident during a debug session and kill all my probes.

 

Lots of great suggestions for probes in the forum.

 

 

In the palette you can designate a VI to "Place VI Contents" (used to be "Merge VI" in LV 7.1).

I typically drop most VIs from the Project Explorer now.

It would be handy to designate VIs in the Project in the same fashion, so you could drop the "VI Contents" from a Project selection.

 

I admit I only use "merge VIs" about 0.01% of the time but today was one of those days.

 

The current VISA read and write primatives do not have the ability to abort early. Under many circumstances if the timeout values are short this is not an issue but it can be an issue if a long timeout is required. The current work around is to use a short timeout value and loop continually ignoring the individual timeouts until a threshold has passed and then pass the timeout error out. This apporach requires the extra code to "monitor" the process of the communication. It also requires shift registers and associated logic to maintain the data. It would be desireable to simply set the timeout for the desired value and have a separate VISA property that can be set cause the current operation to abort.

Currently, all setup (any any other configurable items) for LabVIEW is stored in the LabVIEW folder hierarchy.  I would like to see it moved to the User folders.  This would provide several advantages:

 

  1. Multiple users can use LabVIEW without having to worry about reconfiguring someone else's setup.  This can be especially nice for the pallette menus, if different users like to "tweak" the default layout and create personal custom palltte menus.
  2. For people who use roaming profiles (such as me), whatever station I sit down at and log into will have the LabVIEW configuration I use on every system.  Any modifcation is automatically updated in my profile and "moves" with me from PC to PC. 
  3. It would provide an easier way to backup settings, since all customizable settings will be in one place, and not mixed in with LabVIEW installation files which aren't customizable.

A multiple case structure is always difficult to navigate to and understand. A toggle option like the below will add clarity

 

idea.JPG

Please note the Case summary text option suggested in the right of each case in this view. In the present view you have to navigate to each case to get a glimpse of what is done. A simple summary like below will add a lot of clarity and help in understanding what is actually being wired in the subsequent cases (just an example)

 

 

notes.JPG

 

Will be helpful while dealing with multiple case structures isnt it?

case.PNG

 

Can the case selector be centred always irrespecive of the drag.  I feel the justification will give the block diagram uniformity.

Another suggestion, which would be nice.

 

When you have a tab control and create an enum from it to use in the BD, it is not dynamically linked to the original tab control. In other words if you add or remove a page the enum on the BD is not valid anymore, but is not actually broken as its just a plain vanilla enum.

 

If the enum created from a tab control was a typedef then it would automatically update if the tab pages are modified.

A work around is to have the tab control as a typedef itself (actually I have just thought of this, don't know why it never occurred to me before!) but I would still like the modified behaviour as its one less typedef I have to manage myself!

 

<INSERT FANCY PICTURE HERE TO GET EVERYONE'S ATTENTION>

 

 

One thing that has always annoyed me about resizing of loops is the inconsistent (at least to me) behavior when it comes to resizing them, and the movement of the loop terminals, depending on whether or not something is connected to them. The behavior varies depending on whether or not you have AutoGrow enabled in the options, which is even more confusing since that setting affects when you shrink a loop.

 

Behavior 1:

resize_BD.png

 

Behavior 2:

 resize 2_BD.png

To me this seems like inconsistent behavior, though others may see it as perfectly consistent. May I humbly request that, at the very least, there be a consideration that when resizing loops, the iteration and conditional terminals are never "lost", regardless of whether AutoGrow is enabled or not?

How about a new menu item for the right click context menu? Replace --> "Replace with selected project item"

 

This would replace the currently selected VI in the BD with the VI that is highlighted in the Project.

 

I am sure this can probably be done with scripting and the Right-Click-Framework from JKI, but it would be nice to have this as a native feature.

 

Pic sort-of shows what I mean (the "From Project" would probably need to be more sensible but thats the idea)

 

replace.png

If you click in empty space on a block diagram, then press any of the arrow keys on the keyboard, nothing happens. I propose that this action should pan the block diagram. This idea hit me while huddled in an airplane seat trying to review some block diagrams - it was a laborious task trying to pan using the laptop touchpad that would have been greatly simplified by just using keyboard arrows. This intuitive action is already standard in web browsers and popular document editing software.

LabVIEW still only gives access to Windows95 color pallette.  With XP, themes came into play and there are numerous other colors used by those themes.  Since NI doesn't provided system-like controls for their non-system standard controls, many of us attempt to make it "feel" like a system control.  Unfortunately, the standard system colors are in the themes (for example, the border color on the system numerics and strings).  I can figure out what the color is for the current theme, but if the user is using a different theme, the color doesn't automatically change.

I was very happy when NI implemented this feature in LabVIEW, but was disappointed when it was not implemented in many other programs I use.

 

  1. In most other programs that have this feature, the selection order determines the "home" position for the alignment.  For example, If I select 3 objects ans alogn left, LV aligns to the left-most object.  Other programs align to the left of the first object selected.  This is particularly useful for centering objects, as LV uses a calculated center line, so I am constantly readjusting or temporarily grouping objects to try to get things where I need them to be.  If I had one object where I wanted it, I could select that first, then center everything else to it.  (I admit it will take some getting used to at this point, but it would at least be consistent with how the feature is used elsewhere).
  2. Allow locked objects to be selected for alignment.  Just because it is locked doesn't mean I don't want to use it for alignment purposes.  Obviously, I don't want it to move, but it would be nice to be able to select it without having to unlock it, align, then relock.
  3. I would like to see an align with pane option as well.  This is most useful for centering, but I would also have some use for it when I am trying to put an abject right a the corner of the pane.
Pretty simple request, I would like to have a numeric constant for i (sqrt(-1)).  It would be much easier than creating the 0 + 1i numeric constant and would look much cooler, especially if they choose a nice script 'i'.