LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Currently, the TDMS File api does not offer a way to get the TDMS file size.

Our use case is that we'd like to limit the size of the TDMS files and span them accross multiple individual files (and I've posted an idea suggestion for adding that as a native feature, too).  To do this, we need to be able to monitor the TDMS file size, so that we can save/close the current file and then create the next file in the span for continued use (until we hit the size limit again).

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

Background

The DAQmx apis allow streaming measurements to TDMS. This supports spanning multiple files (by setting the max file size for individual files in the span set), which is very useful.

We need a similar feature for files we're writing to directly (i.e. not using DAQmx) with the TDMS File functions in LabVIEW.

Note: The main reason we wanting this feature, right now, is that our files are growing quite large and when we run the TDMS Defragement function, we get out of memory errors in RT on cRIO (e.g. if we have 512MB RAM on our cRIO and the TDMS file is around the same size).

Alternatives

We're thinking to do this ourselves, however the TDMS file api does not support checking the file size from a TDMS file reference  (and that's a great idea, too).

I'm not totally sure how this would be added to the TDMS file api -- maybe there could be a "TDMS Advanced Spanning" palette with options for configuring and interacting with TDMS spanning.

When manually analysing a project, we can set the target in which the VIs should be loaded. Unfortunately, VIs with RT code are often broken under windows, leading to wrong test results, or even worse, pop-ups asking for VIs.

Please add an Application Reference Input for the VIAn Run.v.

Maybe this option could also be useful set in the VI Analyzer configuration file?

When creating an installer for a built LabVIEW application, it is very difficult (see here) to include an additional 3rd party installer (such as a device driver or application that your built application depends upon).  What I'd like to see is a solution that treats 3rd party installers as first class citizens.  I'm imagining a new "Additional 3rd Party Installers" page of the Installer build specification properties dialog.

This page might look something like the one in the screenshot below, allowing users to add a folder that contains the 3rd party installer files and define a command that is run inside that folder during the install process.

When LabVIEW builds the installer, it would suck the additional installer folders into the main installer and, after installing your app files and the additional NI installers, it would sequencially extract your additional 3rd party installers into a temp folder and then execute the command line to run.  This is a pretty simple scheme that would really simplify the process for end users.

I'm sure I didn't address every issue of this use case, so please, everyone, feel free to add your own ideas.  I'd love to hear your comments.

The State Diagram Editor was a very cool tool and lots of LabVIEW users (not only beginners, far from!) are missing it!

And no, the state chart module is not a replacement for the State Diagram Editor!

Discussion here.

Image borowed from Ben

The VI Properties window allows to select between local help file and Web-based Help URL.

LabVIEW Class, Library and Project doesn't allow to use Web-based URL.

The idea is to have the same behavior for all source file.

I think it would be nice if LabVIEW was smart enough to know that when I drop a For Loop around scalar inputs it doesn't auto-index output tunnels - but rather uses Shift Registers - for matching inputs and outputs.

The common use case for this is with the Error input/output - it annoys me how it becomes an Array output.

As it is already wired, inline and not broken, dropping a For Loop around it should not break my code! 

Reference or Class inputs are other use case too - I want to pass the same thing around not create an Array. 

Shift registers are better than non-auto-indexed tunnels (other option) as they protect the inputs on zero iterations.

This would remove one step required for most use cases, speeding up my development experience.

The concept of fluent interfaces using method chaining applied to a LabVIEW block diagram would be awesome!

When calling .NET libraries from LabVIEW, block diagrams explode horizontally - the aspect ratio of the diagram can easily push 5:1 or worse (it's 10:1 in the example below). Some Method Chaining syntactical sugar would yield a more space-efficient-and-readable 4:3 to 16:9 or so.

Property Chaining is already well-established in LabVIEW - let's get us some Method Chaining!

See the first comment for footnotes...