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Auto sort project folder contents

Every time I drag a new VI into a virtual folder in my project, it is placed at the bottom (if the folder was not expanded). The first thing I do is to right click on the folder and 'Arrange by name'. This is getting tedious. I want to be able to set the folder to always arrange by name (or type or path). All we need is a persistant check mark next to the 'name' option. Most (if not all) OSes can remember these kind of settings for each folder in thier UI, LabVIEW needs to do this too.

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Create smaller banner for libraries

Add/Remove Input from more Array functions

"To Index or Not To Index"

For While Loops and For Loops, the Auto index tunnel should be turned on or off based what the end of the wire is connected to.

For array wires coming into a For or While loops if I connect it to a scalar input then Auto Indexing is ON. If I connect it to an array input then Auto Indexing is OFF.

For scalar wires going out of a For or While loop if I connect it to scalar input then Auto Indexing is OFF. If I connect it to an array input then Auto Indexing is ON.

Wires going into polymorphic input will default to normal mode, Index for For Loops and not indexed for While loops.

"block application builder" toolkit

The Lego NXT software release (not toolkit) is a wonderful interactive environment, that should be provided as an add-on application

on its own, call it "block application builder". I see many useful applications in a variety of different industries where businesses wish to extend to their customers interactive and intuitive interface that they can program in their desired configuration of the product's behavior according to their own use cases.

That means we need an environment where we can prepackage blocks that is functionally specific to their applications, with ability to sequence them, run them in parallel, add conditional runs, and iterative loops. The blocks themselves could be computational in nature, or additionally provide user interface popups for interrogating the user, and have access to the full range of Labview functionality. Each block properties settings can appear as front panel settings for user to customize the behavior of that block. This is exactly how the

Log mindstorm software was configured, except we ask that you extend the availability of that functionality for the general users to develop their own intuitive applications using the same environment framework design. This application can target building the customer created sequence of operations as a windows .exe or .dll. We also would like to customize the menus in the application. In other words, make the Lego mindstorm application a generic template for us to develop our own applications with similar intuitive framework.

I have a rather large string indicator for displaying operator messages/alarms

and I would like to have the option for an automatic vertical center of the text,

so that all messages get displayed in the center of the screen (if too many lines, justify to top and display the scrollbar).

I also have a 2 line statusbar, but displaying a 1 line message that is not vertically centered, looks very strange.

The work-around I'm using now is to display the multiline string centered in a picturecontrol,

but I'm not a big fan of this fix because there are many boundary-conditions to keep in mind ...

Another annoyance is that to prevent selection of text in the indicator I often disable the indicator

(it looks unprofessional if an indicatortext can be selected in the GUI),

but if the displayed text is larger than the string indicator, the scrollbar is also disabled !?!?

and therefore not controllable by the user

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I always use "Find All Instances" for searching where a subvi / control is used.

When looking into code that is locked (read-only because of being under source control), this option is missing!!.

Now I always have to press Ctrl-M to Unlock, then press change on the next dialog

before the "Find All Instances" becomes active
Or open the VI Hierarchy (could take a while on a large project)
and here the normal right-click "Find All Instances" is not blocked!!

I don't think it should be a big problem to enable the right-click menu on a locked vi...

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Multiple Wire Insert

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Idea exchange enhancements

Sorry if this is a duplicate. I though I posted this a couple of days ago, but it hasn't appeared.

These are suggestions for this site:

Add a label: "Ideas Exchange Enhancements"

Put "Previous" and "Next" at the top of the page as well as the bottom. Better yet allow us to go to the first, last, or particular pages like other forums (ex: << 1 2 3... >>). Put this interface at top and bottom.

In advanced search give the option to go to the PAGE the idea appears on rather than the idea itself. Currently if I search for a particular date (the last time I looked at ideas) I get a list of ideas for that date. If I click on an idea I go to the idea itself and any posted comments. There doesn't seem to be a way to get to that day's page of ideas short of starting at the first and clicking on "Next" over and over.

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Loops that generate arrays with each iteration sometimes need to be appended or concatenated together and retain the same number of dimensions when brought out from the loop. Currently this can be done using a shift register along with Build Array, Insert into Array or Replace Array Subset for example . Such wiring could be eliminated and diagram space saved if the generated arrays could simply be wired to the loop output border and an option to Auto-Append or Auto-Concatenate provided. This would be similar to the existing Enable Indexing option except that the array dimensionality would remain the same. This would be useful for example in while loops that are extracting currently available data from an acquisition process where one wants to build up one array containing all the final data.

I would like to see a case statement that would work like a switch statement in C. You could wire a cluster of information to the input that has all the data of interest in it, such as the values of A, B, C, and D. Each page of the case statement would have a complex logic statement that defined what it handled, such as "A<3 and B>4". If this was false, it would drop through to the next case. If none of the cases were true, it would drop down to the default case which would always be last.

Another possibility instead of a cluster would be using one input for each variable, just like the formula node uses. You could enter a name for each input that would be used in the case statements.

This would have saved me a bunch of time in a recent program, where there were three possible values for A and three for B, as well as C and D. The cases ended up being nested four deep, which is something of an editing nightmare. The ability to do multiple comparisons within a single case statement would have been wonderful.

It might be a little confusing to keep track of the order/priority of the cases. We might need some sort of tool for viewing the whole list of cases and editing each case, sort of like editing the list of values for an enum.

This idea was inspired by JeanPierre's request for an if else statement.

Bruce

Message Edited by Bruce Ammons on 07-30-2009 10:42 PM

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When you do a search for something in the hierarchy and you have a password protected VI, you get this dialog:

Often (for example in this case) we don't have the password for the VI and never will because it was developed by someone else. So why not allow us not to see this in the first place?

First idea - Don't display this at all for VIs in vi.lib. Just skip them.
Presumably before LabVIEW ships the VIs aren't locked anyway, so the LabVIEW developers shouldn't have a problem, and if they do, let them do a programmatic unlock. The users shouldn't be the ones to suffer.
Second idea - Generalize it a bit more. Allow us to have a configurable list of folders where the search won't bother to try and unlock VIs (so that if we have locked code from other vendors, we can discard it as well). The default folder for the list should be vi.lib.

What's wrong with the current LabVIEW Fonts option dialog? Plenty!

Let's have a look:

We can only see one of the three font groups
It does not tell us the name of the current font, just how it looks!

If we specify a custom font, we get a dialog that has confused me since I started out with LabVIEW 4.0 way over 10 years ago.

Especially the two checkboxes in the lower left corner have bugged me since day one, because they are very confusing.

If we open this dialog from the options menu, both boxes are unchecked.
If we open this dialog from the BD or FP font pulldown, one of the checkboxes in inoperational, but not greyed out. Why???
Unless we read the help, it is not clear what they actually do and what they actually show.
Do I click these to make whatever I have selected the default or do I click these to revert back to the default???
...

This font dialog needs to go and be redesigned from scratch!

IDEA:

Why not make the Font options a bit more intuitive. Here's a quick draft. Even if we select the default font, it should show what it is but have the parts on the right greyed out.

It probably would need a small preview area below each selection (not shown). Each can be much smaller than the current preview window. (It does not matter if a 500pt font is clipped a bit.)

Message Edited by altenbach on 07-28-2009 09:41 AM

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A text toolbar

As mentioned at the end of my comment here, editing text is a bit clumsy. There should be a text toobar that is similar to what we can find in any other application.

Maybe it could be dynamic so it only appears when editing text.

Here's the quote from the other thread:

One thing that should be improved is the font pulldown which feels so early 1990's. When working with text, we want a text toolbar like anywhere else, (even in the post editor here in the forum!) with a bold, italic, etc. buttons, font and size rings, etc. You know what I mean!

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LabVIEW IDE Overhaul

1. Allow for "Tabbed Browsing" of VI's to better manage windows.

2. Allow for the BD to be open independent of the FP.

3. Allow dockable palettes... dock to either the edge of the screen, or to the top bar (pictured below) of LabVIEW.

4. As a bonus, consider being able to open PDF's, txt's, and html's in tabs also for Help and documentation.

5. Finally, allow the project tree to be docked into the IDE.

Please, add your own IDE upgrade ideas in this discussion - illustrations will be especially helpful here. If it's a major enough idea, create a new idea!

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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Auto sort project folder contents

Visual indication that a constant is linked to TypeDef

User Dialog that doesn't keep the rest of my code waiting until OK is pressed

Create smaller banner for libraries

Add/Remove Input from more Array functions

Smart Auto Index Tunnel for While and For Loops

"block application builder" toolkit

Add vertical center for string indicators (and don't disable scrollbars on disabled indicators)

(sub)VI-Icon: make "Find All Instances" also available when VI is locked (Read-only)

Multiple Wire Insert

View as Icon

Idea exchange enhancements

Auto-Append or Concatenation of arrays on loop output tunnels

Equivalent of Switch statement in C

Labels handled during block diagram cleanup

Ability to mark the top level VI in a project and run it from a shortcut key

Automatically skip password protected vi.lib VIs when searching

A better way to specify (default) fonts

A text toolbar

LabVIEW IDE Overhaul