LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Using "Fit control to pane" and the "Scale Object with Pane" options it is now relatively simple to build front panels that scale the way users are used to from other applications - however there is one shortcoming that it is easy to run into: cases where you want a tab and (some of) the controls (a table e.g.) on it to scale with a pane.

Getting the tab to fit and scale is a done deal, but then comes the scaling of the objects on the tab...

The option you have today is to fit the controls on the tab to the pane...however that does not give a proper behaviour because then they grow larger than the tab they are on. Objects that are set to fit and scale to the pane should basically use the tab as their "pane" - not the pane the tab is on.

My typical workflow is:

1) Start LabVIEW

2) Realize I have to pull\update my project from SCC

3) Explore to the project manually in windows explorer. Or open project, explore, close project, update SCC, reopen.

It would be nice to have an explore option in the Getting Started Window:

Either a right click menu, a button for each item or a button for the selected item would be great.

Same for VIs, maybe even the templates.

Currently if code is already written, it is difficult to put it into a sequence structure, splitting the code into multiple frames, without breaking wires. It would be great if when I right clicked on the edge of a sequence structure and chose "add frame after" it allowed me to draw the next frame before placing it.

I would also like to be able to selectively split an existing frame up

Wouldn't this be easy and intuitive?

I tried to look for other ideas like this on the exchange and all I found was this but he was a little confusing in explaining his idea and how would it work. 

For as long as I can remember (I have used LabView since 4.0) the decorations and contropls pallette have remained unchanges for the most part.  End users want an application more like the iPhone than windows98.  We need a new decorations capability to be able to customize controls  to a high level.  The square circle and triangle of 2 colors and flat or 3d/rounded nolonger cuts it.  I would like to see a new type of decoration.

- Decoration made of vector graphics so it is scalable, user can add or remove verticies and move them around to make new shapes.

- Labview native color pallet linked to item colors (default can be 2 color option of FG, BG but scale this to an array of colors to make more complex decorations)

- Colors add transparancy and alpha channel

- Grouping allows building of a single new decoration from several  primitive shapes.

- Decoration possible support gradients (color blending)

*** Decorations should have optional labels so that they can be addressed programatically

-Decorations added to customized controls that have lables associated with them become part of the control and can be accessed via a property (ie can be set to not visible through a property node)

I know this is asking quite alot, but I have found that when I make my applications not look like LabView (and it is easy to spot a LabView application) it is not a well recieved as when I present a highly customized application that does not look like a labview example.  Allowing the community to easily create very professional looking new controls and indicators will do wonders for our GUIs.

Local Variables. When a VI has a hell of a lot of Controls or Indicators, creating a Local Variable can be a pain. The list to choose from can get very, very long, sometimes so long that it needs a scrollbar.

The current method of selecting which control a Local is connect to looks like so:

All in all, not too bad. I like the alphabetical ordering, and the fact that you can type to choose one.

However, from this image you have no idea what datatype each of these variables are (the name helps a bit). I suggest adding the Data Type and Control/Indicator information to this menu like so:

You can now easily see that "Params" is a cluster control, "XY Graphs" is an array of Refnums control, and "Vg Points" is an indicator array of I32. Notice that the datatypes are color coded and look similar to the block diagram icon.

In addition to this simple display change, it would be nice if there were an option somewhere in the preferences that sorted this list in different ways. Perhaps two different options: 1. First by Alpha, then by Type - or 2. First by Type, then by Alpha.

For those of you who prepend a data qualifier to the beginning of your controls and indicators (such as "str_Input1" or "dbl_Numeric"), this will still help you via the color coding. Plus you probably don't do that for ALL your controls, ones that end-users will be modifying when you release your code.

I normally have 32x32 png images on disk and have to copy and paste them in (and that doesn't always work well and has been reported).

I think it would be cool and fast if I could just drag and drop an image into the Icon Editor from disk.

I would like this image to appear as the top-most User Layer or replace the currently selected image (as per mockup below).

There should be an option to fully enable optimization when building an application as to automatically remove performance impacts caused by diagram elements that shouldn't cause any.

As summarily declined by NI, this idea

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Improve-Diagram-Disable-performance/idc-p/3253939#M34372

shows that unless you manually go over ALL your VIs disabling debugging, Diagram Disables (that are supposed to not avoid executing some code!) you'll suffer a performance impact.

It is preposterous to expect the users to manually disable/reenable debugging on every single VI when building an application.

Please add an option to enable full optimization.