LabVIEW Idea Exchange

The Close Reference –VI could be integrated into the Property Node ore the invoke node.

I would recommend that the reference output could be activated or deactivated.

A deactivated reference output

• would change its appearance
• would close the reference immediately after a the call.

An activated reference

• should require a connected wire on its output. Otherwise an error should be indicated (somehow).

My comments  

• An integrated Close Reference –Function would simplify the code and improve the readability.

   

• The output should be changeable in the context menu / pop-up menu of the Property Node.

   

• The default state needs to be discussed. I would recommend to close it by default. Sometimes it is not necessary to close the reference – it would lead to a void operation --> so what? Sometimes it is required to close it later. I think in this case you would find it out after the first run of your vi.
• Usually it would not mater if somebody would let some references open. LabVIEW closes open references finally. But if an application should run for several days, left open references could lead to problems. Because of this I think that it is better to close to often than left some references open.
• I am not sure how LabVIEW should react if an activated reference output would not be connected. I would recommend to indicate an error. In my opinion this would be an additional new feature to LabVIEW. LabVIEW does check inputs only. But this is another problem to discus.
• Perhaps there are other places / VIs to implement an auto-close reference output.

I like channel wires for obvious reasons. I like to have modules, which work on their own, coming with their own GUI. This is convenient for developing my modules and testing them. Afterwards I want to be free to insert this module into a bigger project, which takes control of my module.

The channel wire controls on the connector pane can be set optional, but LabVIEW throws an error, when executing a VI with not connected channel wire control. (All branches of a channel wire must be connected to a channel endpoint...)
Please make VIs working with not connected, optional channel wire controls on the connector pane. That way, we can have channel wire based modules, which can run on their own, as a single VI, or can be controlled remotely without any change.

Add a list with every error code a function can give out to the context help and/or the main help window of each function. The error-code tables included in the help file are very general at the moments. But even a table just for the File I/O error codes would not help much, because the different file I/O functions usually do not output the same error codes.

1. This would greatly help to replace certain error codes by user-specific error messages.

2. By knowing exactly which error can occur, you can handle each error code in the appropriate way, to make your SubVI etc. much more robust.

(This picture is just an example with randomly chosen numbers for the error codes to display, what i am talking about.)

                        NI does not need to worry about the code, I provide it, it's a proposal plug&play