LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Currently, if you select a tunnel, you can only move it along the border of the structure - attempting to move the tunnel perpendicular to the structure border is just a no-op. Instead, I'd like to see this action resize the structure!

The first video demonstrates current behavior, how tunnels cannot affect structure boundary sizing. The second video shows a selected tunnel resizing the structure boundary as it is repositioned.

1. These demonstrations reposition the selection using the Keyboard, but the same principle could apply repositioning a selection with the Mouse.
2. A side perq of this feature is that structures are resizable with fine, granular control using the Keyboard!

The shortcut menu should launch the new type def.'s front panel when 'Make Type Def.' is selected. You will need to save it anyway, and if you find the need to edit it right away, then it is already open and ready to go.

TestStand provides the extremely useful Label step type.

It would be extremely useful if the LabVIEW Project Explorer provided a similar Note project item. The Note would serve as a documentation and annotation tool inside the project. Project notes would serve to explain the purpose of a group of lvlibs or lvclasses, or to provide short descriptions inside an lvlib, lvclass, or virtual folder.

As a workaround I currently use virtual folders to add notes to the project. By convention I name these virtual folders starting with "_Note:". The underscore helps the Note appear first (near the top) when the items are arranged by Name or by Type. By convention I never add any item inside the _Note virtual folders.

The implementation of a Note item could be quite simple. A Note item would essentially be just like a virtual folder with the following modifications:

• Different icon. An icon that resembles a document would make sense.
• The Note item would not be able to contain any other items.

"A picture is worth a thousand words..."

That's especially true when describing complex interactions of the kind often seen in code.  Currently the block diagram decorations consists of 4 elements: a line, a straight arrow, a frame, and a label.  I can and often do create state diagrams out of those elements, but they look very hacked together (i.e. unprofessional) and are cumbersome to create.  The alternative is to use an external graphics program and paste the image into the block diagram.  I do that sometimes too, but it makes it harder to keep the diagram up to date.

I'd like to see elements added to the decorations palette to help us create graphical comments.  Since state machines are very commonly implemented in Labview, that seems like a good place to start.  How about adding a state decoration and a transition decoration?  The state decoration should allow more formatting flexibility than the label does.  (Like having the first line centered and the rest left justified.)  The transition decoration should be an arrow that allows routing--either smooth curves or point turns.  It should also have a label attached to it for identifying the transition trigger.

Here's an example of a state diagram for some proof of concept code I wrote that I pasted to the block diagram.  I'd like to be able to easily do these kinds of drawings without needing a 3rd party app.

The detailed help link in the LabVIEW Context Help window is a great way to add extra documentation to your LabVIEW code.  However it currently only supports .hlp, .chm, .htm, and .html files types.  This should support many more documentation types such as pdf, txt, doc, .xls, png, .etc, etc.

Hi all,

Since the release of the new “Silver” control style in LabVIEW 2011, I had the idea of having a style control on the front panel. You would essentially click the drop down box and it would change all/selected controls and indicators on the front panel to that style.

Take a look at the mock up below.

The idea could be extended to having a style of control that the User could populate, notice the “User” on the drop down.

I hope that you like my suggestion I can certainly see many uses for this.

Hello all,

This is an elaboration on a prior request by RavensFan:

When AppBuilder reports a file related error, such as error 8, could someone please provide a path?

I have no idea what's causing my file IO error, as I am running LabVIEW as a local admin and there should be nothing interfering with my path.

I can't probe a path wire in the AB method because the diagrams are understandably locked.

This is so frustrating.  No one likes to debug by guessing and it wastes a tremendous amount of time.

Thank you with my deepest respect to the AB team.

Jim

For example:

Currently, the "In Range and Coerce" function requires that the upper and lower limits be wired. Often I am only interested in coercing at one end of the range. It seems crazy to wire "-2147483648" to the lower limit of an I32 just to ignore that input and coerce the maximum...

I'd like to propose that this function allow unwired limits, and that unwired limits assume the maximum or minimum allowable values for the given datatype:

What if you need to run exe as admin mode?

Currently Build Specifications is not enought for doing it.

Here you are what you need to do:

1. Built the executable

2. Install mt.exe (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=8279)
3. Opened cmd as adminstrator and ran mt.exe -inputresource:"Application directory\application.exe" -out:application.manifest
4. Opened application.manifest and changed input="asInvoker" to "requireAdministrator".
5. Saved application.manifest
6. ran mt.exe -manifest:application.manifest -outputresource:"Application directory\application.exe";#1

Is it an effective method?

It would be better the following:

1. Create Manifest

2. Easy modification in My Application Properties

Hope it helps to do a more effective LabVIEW!

Álvaro

A customer called in to NI technical support with the following idea pertaining to custom error codes and the Error Code Editor.

Is it possible to have Error Code Editor remain open during normal LabVIEW coding. This way customer's can add custom codes as they code their projects. The Error Code Editor found by going to tools->Advanced->Edit Error Codes... currently will not allow user to continue using LabVIEW until they have selected the close option as of LabVIEW 2019 sp1. This related to the fact that user must restart LabVIEW after editing custom error codes for them to correcty appear in a new error ring dropped on the block diagram.

If a error ring was already created, then the error code file (in XML format) has already been parsed. Thus no new ones will appear for use. If there was a way to more actively add and then use custom error codes, customers could make use of more error handling features.

Jesse Grigg

Technical Support Engineering

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support

Using ctrl + scroll for switching between the cases is somewhat hard to use, because when you have lots of cases its difficult to remember what is the order of them so its harder to ctrl scroll the one you looking for than to go to the case selector. Moreover if you work with bigger sized structures (which happens sometimes) you may not even have the case selector on your screen so if you ctrl scroll, you can only deduct which case you see by the visible part of the code itself. That doesnt work for me, I always go to the selector.

But what if when the user uses ctrl + scroll a small popup would appear at the mouse pointer and when the user scrolls up and down the highligh would move up and down selecting any case in the given structure?

This would highly increase the usability.

Applicable to the Event structure as well.