LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Vanishing mysteriously in LabVIEW 8, the Error Ring Constant is much missed.  Sure, we all have our own copies squirreled away but it was still nice to find it there on the Additional Numeric Constants pallet.

For those who never used this little gem, it was a ring containing the name of the first 100 or so built-in LabVIEW error codes.  It was especially useful when using the Error Cluster From Error Code VI to create a quick error.  You would just pick an error that sounded something like what was happening (End of File, Argument Error, Device Not Found, or the ever popular Generic Error, to name a few) then add your own error message and you're done.

I realize that there are more sophisticated error methods available (user errors, etc.) but this was both simple and effective.

Many Windows application are automatically capturing crash report information and emailing that data back to the manufacturer once the User has given their permission. This results in alot of detailed information being captured and sent to the manufactuer with very little effort by the User. National Instruments should do the same thing. Bugs that have eisted in LV for many years need to be fixed in short order, NI needs information to do that.

Hello,

this is NOT a duplicate of this one.

But I couldn't find a duplicate within a few minutes.

I'd like to have an indicator which shows if the case structure compares strings case sensitive or case insensitive:

Regards

Matthias

TDMS could be very useful if they were not so badly handled. The need for files that you can read and write concurrently does exist but TDMS fail to address it right now because of the lack of stability.

Create a TDMS, close the ref and then pass the closed ref to any TDMS function, LabVIEW crashes instantly...

Try use NI's TDMS viewer for a very large file, you get a memory error.

For now I still use WAV file and when customer send me their large TDMS files I always have to struggle around to parse them.

Really TDMS could be cool with a little effort from NI.

The length of the right click context menue (mainly in the block diagram) increases in each new LabVIEW version. So the handling becomes more and more uncomfortable - especially because there is no eye-catcher for the different entries.

There es one program who is doing it much better: MS-Word 2013. There are much more functions in the right click menu in comparison to the LabVIEW menue but it is more comfortable and the items are easier to find because of the icons => Have a look to the picuture.

I'd like to suggest to implement a context sensitive right click menue in the style of MS Office to re-align the existing items and beeing ready for further extensions of the menue.
Beside giving the current menue entries a new style also some of the properties of the structures which are selected could be moved to this new menue (e.g. text styles, number formats, basic alignment, grouping, ...).

TDMS can be a really useful format for saving large amounts of data, the problem I have is that the defrag function can take a long time to execute with no feedback to the user.  This means that there's no way way of reporting back to the user an estimate for how long the defrag will take or even whether or not it is still alive.  I understand that an estimation of the defrag time remaining may be a tall order but having a status flag reporting back that it is still active (maybe with a time stamp so you can double check it's still going) would be a great help.

Clean Up Wire function for several wires

I use the clean up wire function very often. Unfortunately this function is limited to a single selected wire. I don’t know if there is a way to clean up several wires at a time without rearrange the other items.

To clean up a single wire you have to hold the mouse pointer above the desired wire and use the short cut menu (select Clean Up Wire).

I would recommend to extend this clean up wire function in a way that allows to select a certain area and use the 'Clean Up Wire' function (similar to the Block Diagram Clean Up function).

Perhaps it possible to create a short cut menu in LabVIEW if several objects were selected. Additionally a short cut for the Diagram Clean Up function could be added.

These function names create undue confusion. Every semester, new students to LabVIEW post questions on the NI and LAVA forums asking how to use these functions to open, edit or load data from an Excel file (.xls).

Unfortunately, the name spreadsheet file has become synonymous with Excel. Even experienced computer users have an expectation of some sort of intelligent file when reading the title "Read from Spreadsheet File".

These functions should really be renamed to 'Read from' and 'Write to' DSV file...

Delimiter Separator Values  (wikipedia link)