LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Hello,

As shown in below image we can see that, if I index numeric array and wire it with any of the node from numeric function it gives un-aligned wire whereas as same process if I use Boolean function at output of index it gives well aligned wire.

So due to this numeric function node wire to index out terminal makes our code with full of wire bends which is not as per NI LabVIEW coding standards also.

So here, I want to draw attention for NI, to do some correction to specific numeric function nodes so we can make neat and clean code in LabVIEW.

This is a very small suggestion, and hopefully easy to implement.  When wires cross, very often one of the wires involved is an Error wire, and as it is usually wired last, it sits on top of all the other wires.  All I'm asking is that Error wires are always placed underneath all other wires when they are created.  To my mind, this improves the readability of the diagram.

What would help further is if Error wires were "faded", as if they were 50% transparent.  You do need to be able to see them, but not such that they stand out.  But I'm much less certain that such a change could happen.  The khaki color is an improvement on the old pink though, that's for sure!

The compare tool is fundamentally broken which is somewhat shocking considering that such a tool is essential to any sort of large scale or long term software development.

Attached is a basic LV 2023 example which illustrates some of the many flaws with the tool.  If you compare "old version" and "new version" vi without including cosmetic changes, the tool shows 33 differences, most of which are incorrect.

This recent idea reminded me of something I have wanted for quite some time now:  the ability to determine if a property is read or write based on wiring, not some half-buried option in the right-click menu.

The basic idea is simple:  all properties have two terminals, one for writing and one for reading (except read-only of course).  No right-clicking, just wire up the direction you want.

The bottom case is a bit interesting.  I see a few possibilities:

1.  Passthrough (cosmetically saves branching, crossing, etc.) Same behaviour regardless of errors.

2.  Read then write : returns previous value.  What happens if there is an error?  Passthrough, old value?

3. Write then read: almost always passthrough.  In case of error would it return old (ie. actual value) or passthrough?

4. Do not allow this.

I would expect it to perform the write and then the read (3) or passthrough (1).  What is more important to me is the actual value and not the intended value.  Mentally I just see data flowing into then out of the PN when both are wired. 

Bottom line:  I see no reason not to permit the wiring to determine read or write of a property.

If there is a cop-out lack of consensus and simultaneous connections are not allowed, I would at least ask for a keyboard modifier (say shift) such that I can shift-drag to expand the PN and get the same property repeated instead of going down the list.  Then I could at least do the write+read with a lot less mouse movement.

Another for the wish list.

It would be great if the right-click context menu on a case structure had small glyphs to the left of the text (think similar to the TortoiseSVN context menu for those that know what I am talking about).

The reason behind my request is that it often takes me quite a while (a few seconds really, but it slows me down), to figure out which menu item will duplicate a case and which will delete a case. For some reason my brain interprets duplicate and delete as the same and I always have to think about it.

A simple "+" glyph next to add, a "-" next to delete etc would go a long way to making those menu choices a lot simpler.

See attached pic for an mock up.

 There are probably lots of menus that could benefit from something like this.

Some very useful properties for UI manipulation on graphs and charts do not exist. This makes it impossible to make very dynamic UI's with variable number of plots or dynamic resizing in panels.

It is possible to set Legend.number of plots and Legend position. It is not possible to set:

Graph palette, scale legend or cursor legend position. This makes resizing graphs very limiting.   

Further, it is possible to programmatically create a custom legend.  However it is not possible with cursors because there is no property available to get the current cursor values. Please can we have cursor.values[] and cursor.legend.number of rows

On project folder ... 

It would be great if in the project tree,

Just like any items that are called and not on project are in dependencies...

The other way would be for

- Update icons (grayed them out) for items in project without callers to be greyed out or have a different icon like an exclamation mark or similar...

that way it would be easier to know if an item is

dead code or not called by anyone

When cleaning or developing is common to forget which vis are no longer used or needed.