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I don't like and don't use the Auto Grow option of structures. Therefore, I always uncheck Place structures with Auto Grow enabled in the LabVIEW options. A visual mark on the structures or a specific entry in the Find and Replace dialog box would help me to locate these structures on inherited VIs.

 

Auto Grow structure.jpg

Auto Grow.jpg

Have you ever noticed that the size of source is not the same in the error in/out clusters ?

 

Error in error out.jpg

 

It should not take more than 30 seconds to correct this for the next release of LabVIEW !

In electrical schematics it is common to break up long wires with a label in each end. I wish this feature was available also in LabView.

 

The wire should still work in a data-flow way, unlike local variables. It should also be possible to have many connections to the same wire.

 

labview_break_labels.PNG

 How many developers are using a splash screen for their applications ? Shouldn't this be a straightforward task even for beginners ? NI should provide an easier way to implement this technique.

Right click a property node to set defer panel updates (with automatic un-setting at completion), so this does not have to be done explicitly with another ref to the owning VI. A glyph indicating this has been set could appear to indicate the option is invoked, similar to 'ignore errors inside node'.

There is a need to have the capabilities to make comment about a type def/strict type def control (in the control editor) that are only visible in the control editor.

 

Control Editor Comment.png

 

For instance you might want to point to the person editing the control that he/she should not rename that particular cluster element or this will brake the code (and you may want to use an arrow pointing to the element along with some text).

 

Currently, if you do that the comment become part of the control and is visible for every front panel instance. This bring absolutely nothing to be able to see that type of comment on the FP and it should not be seen by the user of the control (because this actually make the type def so large an unwieldy).

 

Therefore, there should be a need to select a group of decorations and mark them has only visible in the control editor .

 

Note: Right now the only way to achieve something similar to what I describe, is to put the comment in the control description, but this is no great because:

 

  1. People tend to not expect control to have VI description.
  2. This does not allow to use arrow and such to directly point  to a specific part of a control.

 

PJM

I find the color of the Reorder Button on the front panel a little confusing.  The colors of the two circular arrows being gray gives me the impression that the buttons is disabled for some reason, especially considering the related buttons to the left have some color with green and yellow boxes.  It causes me a slight mental block every time I want to use it.  I would suggest that the Reorder button be given some color, such as green, so that it mentally gives the impression that it is allowed to be pressed.

Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 06-21-2009 01:15 AM

I know that I am fresh on these forums, and have only used LabView professionally the last half year, but nothing like this came up when searching, so perhaps it is is an idea worth mentioning:  

 

Currently in labview: If we want to create a control from the terminal of a subvi or function we now have to left click -> create -> control. This action in itself require several seconds and very often a misclick produces an indicator or constant instead.  (move mouse, select it, delete it, back to the terminal, left click, create, control)

 

My idea: Double clicking a terminal has today no useful action linked to it - so my idea is that when double clicking an input terminal a linked control will be created, and when double clicking an output terminal a linked indicator will be created. 

 

Crtl + double click could create a constant: linked when clicking on a input, floating when clicking an output

 

Ctrl+double click could also create a floating constant when used on wires 😉 

 

 

I would like a click event (Mouse down followed by Mouse up) in addition to the separate mouse down and mouse up.  You can fire a mouse up event without having mouse downed inside a control.  Likewise, you can fire a mouse down event by clicking and dragging and releasing outside of the event.  There have been numerous occasions where I want a click event rather than individual down and up events.

In general I would like to see LabVIEW more in line with the OS GUI standards. We have dialog controls and colors, however they are not set up to be the default choice - and we lack other GUI elements like status bars, notify icons, child windows etc. etc. A large part of LV-programmers' time is spent on ways to get LV to mimic what users will recognise and therefor intuitively understand.

 

In this case I simply miss the "sort glyph" that indicates that a table or listbox is sorted based on a given column and in which direction.

 

I imagine we could show or hide this and set its direction with a property node...It would not handle the sorting (although that would have been neat as well - if you had an in-built sorting that just needed to know a few parameters about the column data to do the job)...

It would be useful to be able to change the Annotation Font Size and Style

 

With the introduction of quick drop it has become extremely efficent to type the funciton you want and have it dropped....quickly....on the block diagram. It would be a nice addition to have this same functionality added to not only the VIs and controls that are in the palettes, but also for the VIs and controls that are in the dependency list for the project. This functionality would allow me to essentially quick drop any of the custom, applicaiton specific VIs that are developed.

 

I realize that this could require quite a bit of refreshing of the quick drop master VI list so as an alternative how about allowing quick drop to scan a particuar project and it's dependencies and add them to the list the first time quick drop is called from a particular project.

 

I could also see the need for a "Force Update" button to force the list to be refreshed after large changes to the dependency list have occured.

The function Index & Bundle Cluster Array can be quite useful and mimics a bundle in a for loop.

 

The reverse operation (= unbundle in a for loop!) would be equally useful.

 I wonder why it is not part of LabVIEW. Seems like an omission. 😉

 

I suggest to add it with the same icon graphics, but with left and right halves swapped.

 

(See also this example)

Message Edited by altenbach on 06-17-2009 01:21 PM

I would like to see an Option for Child Window. This option will useful to keep open FP in Parent FP even when it is moved around, minimized, ect...

I understand LabVIEW dose not support MDI, but simple Child Window option will be helpful. Currently, I am using Windows API to do this, but native supported function/ option can be big help (won’t have to use VI server, Dynamic path builder to check application type vi, exe, llb, and others useful things that needs be done..).

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Enhance the Configuration File VIs with a Write Comment.vi that allows to add comments to the configuration without any workaround.

 

Configuration File VIs.jpg

Allow us to open only the BD by CTRL+Double Clicking on the VI in the project. Sometimes, it's not necessary to see the FP!

LabVIEW has a feature that allow to quickly navigate from one occurence to another in the search result window (see image below).

 

Search Result.png

 

I propose to add the same functionality to the error window (see below).

 

New Error Quick Navigation.png

 

PJM

Message Edited by Support on 06-16-2009 06:25 PM

It could be nice to have the possibility to edit the FP and BD when the VI is running and in pause.

 

Some time it's long to get a software to a state that you want to trouble shoot and It append all the time that you need to stop your app to just toggle a Boolean constant or to change a numeric constant on the block diagram. That will be be very useful to make some minor change to help debug our app.

Feedback nodes can reside entirely inside one case of a case structure. This simplifies coding if feedback operations are limited to one single case. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to retain the output once the loop has finished if the last iteration executes one of the other cases. As a result, we might see local variables or even indicators inside the case containing the feedback node, defeating the "in place" purpose. For a "wired" solution, we need to place the feedback node outside the case and wire across all other cases (image top).

 

I propose an output terminal that sits on the output edge of a loop and contains the contents of the feedback node at the time the loop finishes. Typically that would be the edge of the same loop that contains the initializer terminal (image bottom), but it should also be available for globally initialized feedback nodes and on other loop boundaries surrounding the feedback node (selectable).

 

I am sure this idea needs to be worked out in more detail, so this is just an initial concept. 😄

 

 

 

 

Message Edited by altenbach on 06-16-2009 09:34 AM

The default LabVIEW environment option should not show terminals as an icon. 

 

IconTerminals.png