LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Similar ideas have already been posted but non of them totally hits what I'm missing.

As always - what is the current situation?:
- LabVIEW is installed under "C:\Program Files (x86)\..." - this is a folder where admin rights are usually required to modify it.

- in the named folder the standard VIs are included: vi.lib / user.lib / instr.lib

- my project lays somewhere else - e.g. "C:\myLVProjects\project1", "C:\myLVProjects\project2", ...

- my first project is LabVIEW32 bit, my second is LV64bit,
- one project needs to have the binary code separated from the VI, the other one not
- one projects needs some toolkits from the VI Package manager, the other one not or maybe even incompatible ones to the first project

- one project needs VIs from an additional search path, the other one too but with a different version

long story short:
There are many situations where the configurations of two or more projects conflict with each other. Therefore, switching between two projects can be quite effortful — from adjusting configurations to (de)installing toolkits.

What I like to propose is the following:
Having a new option in the LabVIEW start screen "Create a new development environment".
The only the user has to do is to select a folder on a drive with enough free space.
LabVIEW shall now setup an entire code- and configuration environment. Means it copies vi.lib, user.lib, instruments.lib to this folder. It create a LabVIEW.ini and a link to the exe using this INI. It creates a folder for the compiled object code cache and so on. Installing add-ons from VI package manager shall also be stored in this new folder structure.
And of course, there shall be a place where I can manually add some libraries, my project files and finally also my build results.
If LabVIEW is now started from the named link it only uses the VIs from the environment folder as long relative paths are used (which shall be default).

Again in short: I expect an encapsulated environment that contains everything that is needed to develop one project entirely independent from a second and third project.

Hi all,

image processing is not anymore the "tough stuff"/"niche" of the past. Videos are everywhere now, maybe even more than sounds. So functions that handle video should be included in the cross-platform standard labview, at least for the essential functions (reading/writing files with a minimal set of codecs, acquisition of frames through ip or usb for common protocols, conversion between image format for display and processable data). This would attract a lot of young users. It would also jumpstart future developments of labview in the direction of AI.

Thx

VI Analyzer is great tool but can only perform static analysis on VI (as far as I know). It could be nice to run some tests on libraries / classes or even projects files as well to enforce good practices. 

Many of us using graphical programming for scientific applications, where we dealing with numbers, measurements, etc.

How often we grab to Windows Calculator to compute simple equations?

What about ability to enter something like 3,75*2,8 into any constant or control (in principle everywhere where we can put numbers) and then get computation result in this place:

In the past I've worked in desktop publishing industry and using the software called "Macromedia Freehand MX", and that was really "killer feature", which saves huge amount of time.

This is how it works:

Or for example, 5 rotated copies:

Even in Color mixer simple computations are allowed:

Everywhere where I can put some numbers, in any dialog:

So, my suggestion to have the same in every numeric control or constant.

This is what I mean:

So, it should be allowed to enter here something like "3*5" or "42+3*5" 

As MVP suggested to have the only (at least) base operations *, /, +, -, also combined as shown above, but may be "advanced" support (like fully offered by Formula String) is also not so bad, why not:

Anyway it should work everywhere, including constants on the Block Diagrams:

Also, for example, on Resize Objects Dialog:

Or even in the Settings (in general everywhere for any numeric field across whole LabVIEW):

And also in Run-Time, of course, not only in Development Environment.

If you think that "always enabled" feature will be annoying, then I can suggest to make this optionally per Control/Constant Option:

Or may be as global setting in the Options.

In a simple project, the main entry point into an application is usually easy to find:

However, for more complex projects (particularly those utilising libraries/classes) it may not be obvious where to begin:

Proposal:

LabVIEW should provide a mechanism for tagging one or more VIs such that they are easily accessible to someone unfamiliar with the project. 

One possible implementation:

• Display tagged items as links at the top-level of the project.
• Links would be pinned to the top row
• Link names would be editable and need not correspond to the name of the item they link to. (e.g. The link "main" may point to "WidgetTester.lvlib:GUI.lvclass:launcher.vi")
• For minimal confusion, developers should be encouraged to name the first link "main" (or similar)
• In principle links could point to anything interesting, not just the main VI.
• Double-clicking a link should open (or navigate to?) the target item

Scroll bar should be disabled if all elements are visible! Kudo here to get a big bang for the buck sooner than the 2nd in TOP KUDOED IDEAS from 2013 with 600+ kudos (https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Indicate-that-array-constant-contains-more-elements-than/idi-p/2299860). It points out that the scroll bars are not a viable method because it looks the same when all elements are visible. That is EASY to fix; disable the scroll bar if ALL elements are visible! Currently it is disabled only if an empty element is visible. Perhaps the behavior was originally by design like block diagram scroll bars as mentioned in the reason that the following was Declined, '...without this "boundary", it is impossible to create more space...' but constants can easily be stretched by border handles to create more elements (https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-window-scroll-bars-reflect-actual-contents-of-window/idi-p/1844127).

In the old days the digital display was automatically aligned with the plot legend (if I remember well). Now it is by default not.

It takes some manual alignment actions to get them right. But don't resize your chart!! You can start all over again.

I propose the option to align the digital display as shown in the last picture.

(BTW, looking for duplicates I found one comment in http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Assembly-of-the-graph-s-plots/idc-p/1085440)