LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Imagine the following:

When you hover (take your mouse) over the SubVI node in the callers diagram, the subVI code is brought up as an image in a small rectangle size. And that disappears when the mouse is taken away from the subVI node.

Demonstration (snapshot):

When mouse is hovered over 'SubVI Two.vi',

How does it help ?

1. Understanding a prototype code, where there is less emphasis on creating VI Icon and naming SubVI properly, quick glances of the subVI code can speed up the understanding/edit time.

2. Even otherwise, shipping code, could be sometime hard to understand and require often switches to subVIs block diagram.

3. Huge subVIs code, definitely, the image may not make much sense (as it is contained in a small rectangle), but could be useful to get some basic idea or to clear ambiguities between subVIs expected behavior.

4. This feature must be an opt-in. Not every time, this behavior would be desirable, hence this must be Tools->Options opt-in.

5. Does not open up the block diagram, which means that you have lesser VIs to deal with it in taskbar.

6. Drawback: This could hurt the edit time performance a little but, as LV would have to do some extra work to bring up the image..

I'm developing some software for a colleague, to run on (one of) his machines.  I do my best to follow Good LabVIEW Practices, including using Version Control (SVN) to maintain my code.  Hence my Project "jumps" from computer to computer.

I recently noticed an old problem re-appear, namely occasional Front Panel and Block Diagram labels appearing in a different Font Size (18) than I've set as the default on my Office Desktop and home Laptop (15).  This was really irritating (especially having to find those wayward labels and "fix" them), forcing me to re-examine the Where and How of setting Default Fonts in LabVIEW.

This still appears to be a Dark Art, one (perhaps) involving LabVIEW.ini (and some undocumented keys, not present in the "vanilla" configuration file).  There appear to be several such INI files, with LabVIEW.ini attuned for development, and an INI file in the Data folder of a built Executable for that Executable.  But still, the values are bereft of documentation (i.e. documentation is conspicuous by its absence) and not everything is explained (like why some values are in quotes, what they mean, and how one sets a specific Font, e.g. Arial).

One thing that I, in particular, would like to see would be the ability to set the Font Defaults on a Project basis.  For myself, I "own" the Project, and would want it to have a consistent Font (size) on all my VIs (unless I specifically decide to Emphasize something), no matter on what machine I develop them and when.  If I have to set the Font Default on a machine-wide basis, then every time I develop on my colleague's PC, I'd have to (a) note his settings, (b) change them to mine, and (c) remember to set them back when I finish.  As such sessions are often an hour here, an hour there, this "machine-centric" setting becomes a nuisance fast.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with an NI Applications Engineer, who assisted me in finding (some of) the obscure references to Font Setting Tricks.  I noted that a lot of what the Community knows seems to come from "Reverse-Engineering" NI's settings, and that some Documentation and Standardization (let's get away from designating Fonts as "1", "2", or "3", which have no intrinsic meaning, please) would be a good idea.  Hence this LabVIEW Idea.

Bob Schor

Currently we have File >> Save then File >> Apply Changes.

I would like save and apply changes for typedefs in one operation. So either replace Apply Changes with Save and Apply Changes or add this as another option to the menu.