LabVIEW Idea Exchange

There's a common convention in LabVIEW where if a control is not a required input, you place the default value in parentheses:

 For the most part this make sense and is useful when calling VIs, but there is one place where it's really annoying:

We know there's no error by default. I suggest that NI simply remove this. This can be done today by going to <vi.lib>\errclust.llb and modifying the control, but that's annoying to do with every installation.

I would even go so far as to say that NI should write a VI which will go through vi.lib and remove the text from all the existing VIs. I doubt this would have any backward compatibility issues, because I think the only place where those would be relevant is if someone is calling a VI in vi.lib dynamically AND setting the error in value, and frankly, those people deserve to be punished.

When wiring a numeric or enum to a case structure, we get the existing case as 1 (or the second enum item) and a default case also containing "0" (or the first enum item). Many times we need a special case only for one item and everything else should be in the default case.

Case structures are happy with just the word "default" in the second case. The unfortunate automatic existence of one other specific selector value in the default case hampers workflow. For example in the vast majority of my coding, I want the special case to be zero and the other case to be the default.

After wiring the selector, I could just enter the desired value in the non-default case that is showing, except if that desired value also exists (for no good obvious reason!) in the default case. If this happens, I need to edit the default case. That should not be necessary.

Suggestion: Whenever a default case is automatically created, it should not contain any extra specific selector values.

A malleable VI on a block diagram can be converted from an Instance VI to a Standard VI, which I've found useful to aid debugging. Unfortunately this modifies the calling code and requires the changes to be reverted to restore the original malleable VI.

This idea is to provide an additional right-click option for malleable VIs - View Instance VI. This would open the instance VI in memory, and allow read-only viewing of the block diagram.

This is useful when examining how the Type Specialization Structure cases are being evaluated given the currently wired inputs to a malleable VI. It also offers ability to quickly view the instance VI data types, helping determine which malleable input wires are *actually* broken. In the example below LabVIEW shows all of the inputs to Stall Data Flow.vim as broken, though viewing the instance VI shows only one input is actually broken.

When the Instance VI is opened for viewing, it wouldn't offer any runtime debugging, but means no changes need to be made to the calling VI when performing static code analysis at edit time.

The ability to view instance VIs already exists in LabVIEW through VI scripting (see example below), but would be nicer to have quick access to it when right-clicking a malleable VI.

In Windows File Explorer, Alt + double-click on a file or folder pops up that item's Properties page. It is equivalent to right-clicking and selecting Properties. This is a useful, time-saving keyboard shortcut/gesture.

The same keyboard shortcut/gesture should work in the Project Explorer. Executing the shortcut would pop up the Properties window of whichever item was double-clicked on.

The shortcut should work for lvclass and lvlib items, VIs, and CTLs (and possibly other item types too). For lvclass and lvlib items the Properties window would appear. For VIs and CTLs the VI Properties window would appear (equivalent to Ctrl + I).

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Thanks

Hi all,

What I'm asking for is an optional indication of reentrancy in the context help window.

This would save the user from having to open VI Properties on several VIs, and would be particularly useful when viewing the VI hierarchy.

I realize that Greg Freeman suggested something similar.  My intent here is to narrow down several ideas from that conversation down to a single suggestion.

(I hope I still didn't manage to post a duplicate. Apologies if I did.)

Thanks,

Jim

At the moment, if I want to review my search results, I'm required to double click each item. This opens the diagram (usually) and the front panel. I then have to close them, or I might end up with dozens of open windows.

Of course I could use CTRL+G, but I'd still need to clean up the opened windows.

Another slowdown is that the highlighted item can popup anywhere on my screen(s). This "gaze time" adds up if you need to browse through dozens of results.

It would save me tons of time if the search results window had a preview of the result:

The found item should be in the center, preferably highlighted in some way.

It would allow me to give the listbox key focus, and use up\down to browse through all items very quickly, without any need to clean up!

Some additional thoughts: