LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Idea Part 1: The menu that appears when right-clicking an input of the Replace Array Subset node should contain Add Input and Remove Input options.

Idea Part 2: The QuickDrop Remove and Rewire tool (Ctrl + Space, Ctrl + Shift + R) should remove unwired inputs of the Replace Array Subset node.

This would be similar to the menus of several other well-loved nodes, such as the Build Array node.

Real-world example

The other day I wrote the following code:

Initially all the inputs of the Replace Array Subset node were wired. Then I realised I had made a mistake, and needed to remove the third-last pair of wires. I deleted the wires. So far so good.

I then selected the node and pressed Ctrl + Space, Ctrl + Shift + R to execute the QuickDrop Remove and Rewire tool, in the hope that it would eliminate the unwired input. It didn't. I then right-clicked the input, hoping to manually select Remove Input. That option didn't exist.

The only option I had was to manually disconnect the last four wires and reconnect them one input above, followed by removing the last input by dragging the bottom edge upwards.

Having to manually disconnect and reconnect wires was a little disconcerting. I wondered: what would have happened if I had made a mistake with say the second input, instead of the third-last input? A lot more manual wiring would have had to be redone.

Notes

• This idea is deeply related to the following idea: Add "Add Element" and "Remove Element" to the Index Array context menu. However, I arrived at it independently during recent real-world work, as described above.

The Wire Multiple Objects Together QuickDrop tool (Ctrl + W) is extremely useful. However, at the moment it has the following limitation.

The other day I found myself writing code like the following.

Naturally I tried using the QuickDrop Ctrl + W tool. However, it produced the result seen below, which is not what I wanted.

The Ctrl + W tool wires each source wire to a compatible (coerceable) destination. In the example above it wires to I32 and DBL destinations indiscriminately.

The desired outcome would be achieved if the tool preferred wiring to destinations that match the source data type exactly, before considering other compatible (coercible) destinations. In the example above, the tool should prefer the DBL destinations. It should wire to the DBL destinations first, before considering I32 destinations.

Notes

• The example above shows 10 wires being wired between the Index Array node and the Replace Array Subset node. The real-world VIs I was programming the other day required wiring multiple pairs of Index Array and Replace Array Subset nodes, some with as many as 30 wires between them. Wiring them manually was a tedious and time-consuming operation.
• This idea is somewhat related to the following idea: Improvement to the QuickDrop Ctrl+W tool: Wire constant to multiple destinations

The Wire Multiple Objects Together QuickDrop tool (Ctrl + W) is extremely useful. However, at the moment it cannot wire a block diagram constant to multiple destinations. It would be useful if it could.

Real-world example

The other day I found myself writing the following code.

I tried using Ctrl + W to wire the timestamp constant to each of the timestamp global variables. Currently the tool wires the constant to the first global variable only (leaving all other global variables unwired). Therefore I had to manually wire the constant to each of the other global variables, which is a tedious, manual operation.

Side-note: Global variables are used because they are computationally efficient (they can be read and written to very quickly). We needed code that ran in a tight loop (up to 1,200 times per second). The VI above performs the one-off initialisation of the global variables, before they start being read/written to in the loop.

It would be useful to have a Collapse All button in the Bookmark Manager.

It is tedious to click the "-" button for each bookmark group. Large projects can contain dozens of such bookmark groups. It currently takes too long (too much scrolling) to locate a given bookmark group.

Idea expansion: If a Collapse All button is added, it would perhaps make sense to add an Expand All button.

I am making ever more webservices with labview, but I feel I have little control over the server. It can happpen that a webservice becomes unreachable. Sometimes I would be a crashed webservice application, sometimes it is the NI webserver. But no tools available to find out. I can imagine the following tools in the NI webserver API

- start/stop server

- disable/enable server

- enumerate active webservices

- start/stop or enable/disbale webservices

- redirect domain root endpoint to webservice

- set favicon

- some proxy options would be nice to redirect a domain to a specific webservice

Hi all,

image processing is not anymore the "tough stuff"/"niche" of the past. Videos are everywhere now, maybe even more than sounds. So functions that handle video should be included in the cross-platform standard labview, at least for the essential functions (reading/writing files with a minimal set of codecs, acquisition of frames through ip or usb for common protocols, conversion between image format for display and processable data). This would attract a lot of young users. It would also jumpstart future developments of labview in the direction of AI.

Thx

VI Analyzer is great tool but can only perform static analysis on VI (as far as I know). It could be nice to run some tests on libraries / classes or even projects files as well to enforce good practices. 

Problem: When an error occurs inside some DAQmx VIs, the error source (the string component of the error cluster) does not contain the call chain. This means that it is impossible to know the location where the error occurred based on looking at the error message.

Real-world example: The other day I encountered DAQmx error -200477 on a cRIO-9045 that uses DAQmx to acquire data from several different C-Series modules. The real-time application that was running on the cRIO contained an error handling module, which correctly logged the error to file. I saw the following when using PuTTY and the linux 'cat' command to display the contents of the error log file.

Notice that the error message does not contain any information as to where in the codebase this error actually occurred. This meant that I had to spend a few minutes inspecting the moderately large codebase before identifying the likely location of the error. Running subsequent tests I was able to confirm that that was the location of the error. The error was soon understood and fixed.

Root-cause: The root-cause of the issue (lack of call chain information) is the DAQmx Fill In Error Info.vi. In the real-world example above the error was occurring inside the DAQmx Timing (Sample Clock).vi.

The block diagram of this VI is seen below:

Any LabVIEW errors generated inside that VI are generated by the DAQmx Fill In Error Info.vi. This VI is, of course, essentially a simple translator between the return type (I32) output of the Call Library Function Node and a native LabVIEW error. That VI has an unwired input named depth whose default value is 1. This means that only the last link of the call chain is inserted into the error message.

Solution: Always insert the complete call chain inside all DAQmx error messages.

The default Data Directory path is set to "%Userprofile%\Documents" under windows. 

This is fine regarding custom probes, settings etc, but problematic when it comes to the compile cache and other "runtime" files.

In our corporate setting, this folder is always synced with onedrive AND with the roaming profile. So one problem is, that it bloats the synced volume, which by it self is annoying. But it often leads to corrupt files when onedrive blocks them or writes them in the wrong moment. 

So our workaround is to set this path to %programdata%\LabView Data. This, however, brings new problems, since now all users need write access to this folder.

I think a better way would be to save the folder under %localappdata%, but this can not be done with a symblic path and must be defined static, so it works just for one user.

Solution:

Provide a symbolic link to the %useroprofile% or %localappdata% folders. Additionally it would be nice, if the cache target folder could be seperately defined.

I have created NI MAX custom scales to use in a data acquisition system with a cRIO and LabVIEW.  As part of the Quality Management system at my company, I regularly calibrate instrumentation, and update these calibrations as custom scales in NI MAX.  My issue is that these calibrations/custom scales are a very important part of overall data integrity. The concern is multiple test users can gain access to NI MAX and randomly change the custom scales without knowledge of the Quality System manager, thereby compromising data integrity. Perhaps NI could look into allowing password protections of Custom Scales like they password protect the configuration of the cRIO system I am using.  This would help greatly to protect data integrity. Thanks for your consideration.