LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Please let me know if something like this exists, but I can't seem to find anything.

What I want is a tool to automate some of my subVI building and implementation. There are a few repetitive things I do during development that would be optimized if I was able to build a custom macro to complete these things with some simple customizing inputs.

Here is my scenario:

I have API for each module in my application. Each API VI passes an "Action" enum along with varient data. The "Action" enum is a type-def and the API uses the module's queue reference to pass the action and data to the main module VI.

Every time I want to create a new API VI for a module I have to complete the following steps:

Open a previous made API VI (or template API VI if I want to make one)

Save As my new API (i.e. ReadData.vi)

Open "Action" type-def enum

Edit Items of enum

Add "ReadData" option to enum

Close "Action" type-def

Change Action in API to ReadData

Change Icon in API to match

Save and Close

The only changing variables in my situation are:

Which module for which to create the API

Action name for th enum

This seems like the ideal application for a macro similar to an excel macro or other languages.

Thanks for reading!

Grouping objects on the front panel is helpful to avoid inadvertently destroying a UI's layout.

Unfortunately it comes at a cost: if you want to access block diagram counterparts of any of the objects in that group, you have to first ungroup them, select the object of interest, right-click and select what you are looking for, go there... and hope you won't forget to regroup the objects when you are done.

Surprisingly, you can actually access an individal's object properties and in fact access pretty much any of the right-click contextual menu items BUT the "Find" one. So no "Terminal", "References", "Property Nodes", "Invoke Nodes", Local Variables" access...

Why?

If there is no fundamental reason for this, please consider this as a request.

What I'm suggesting is a combination of an textring and a string control (BD-terminal is a string). The idea behind is, that I like to offer the user a list of pre-defined values (e.g. the values from the five latest program runs) but also the ability to enter a new string.

Of course I can get this functionality by adding two separate controls or by combining those in an XControl but I feel the combination would look better, is much easier to handle in the code and needs less space on the UI.

Please see the picture for better understanding.