LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Auto-indexing of arrays in for and while loops are a nice luxury in LabView.  One option that could save much time would be a menu option to turn on conditional indexing, this would expose a boolean terminal under the auto-index icon to select if the current itteration should add the itteration to the array or skip it.  From an execution standpoint there would only be a minor performance hit (could still preallocate max array size on for loops and automatically return used subset).  This could also work for autoindexed in but would have less use that the autoindeded out case.  I know I have built many conditional arrays inside of a for loop and it requires a case selection and a build array making the code less readable and requires time and thought.  It can also be less efficient than a compiler can do.

See the example below which would run a for loop and only build array of < 0.1

For example, when you probe an array, the "Probe Display" only shows the first value of the array. A lot of times, I would like to see a few elements in the array, somewhat like resizing arrays on the front panel. This would be useful for strings, numerics, and clusters as well.

Current:

Suggested:

It should be nice to limit the action of Ctrl-B to a selected part of the block diagram.

For the moment the Ctrl-B removes all brocken wires in the complete VI.

Sometime when you have a case structure with multiple cases ... and when you have multiple brocken wires in many cases ...It is usefull to keep non visible broken wires...

The broken arrow (list of pending errors) will then help you to find all locations to modify. 

I would like to be able to see that a constant is linked to a typedef without clicking it, especially enums.

This could be a light border around the constant, marching ants, or a flag of some type such as the example I have posted. You can quickly tell that the top enum is not linked to a typedef, whereas the bottom one has the little "td" flag.

 

There should be an easy way to replace a control/indicator/constants of a certain type to an array of that same type, and vice-versa.

Clusters are powerful and necessary, but they can easily clutter up otherwise immaculate code.  Why not have a "View As Icon" option (a la Express VIs) for cluster constants?

Right-click menu change...

There have been similar suggestions, but I think we need a clean, simple solution.

A great time saver would be if we could drag or click to switch connections directly in the connector pane instead of having to disconnect and reconnect controls.

This can be a simple two click process:

If there's already another control\indicator where you click, they get switched.

Whenever we create a constant (or control) on a partially connected function, we get not only the same datatype (good!), but also the same array dimensionality (often not so useful).

In the vast majority, I want do do some uniform operation on the entire array, so a scalar control or diagram constant would be much more desirable. I usually end up creating the array constant, then pulling it out of the container, hook it back up, and delete the container. This guarantees the correct datatype (I32, DBL, CDB, etc).

(It is even more tedious to place a diagram constant from the palette and then remember the datatype and adjust accordingly).

IDEA: 

When creating a control or constant, and it would result in an array, I would prefer to also have a scalar option.

This little move illustrates it in the case of creating a diagram constant. It should apply equally to controls.

                                                                                    but ...

                   same problem for all functions from the Exponential Functions Palette

                                        much more clear, readable and explicit

I think it would be nice if LabVIEW was smart enough to know that when I drop a For Loop around scalar inputs it doesn't auto-index output tunnels - but rather uses Shift Registers - for matching inputs and outputs.

The common use case for this is with the Error input/output - it annoys me how it becomes an Array output.

As it is already wired, inline and not broken, dropping a For Loop around it should not break my code! 

Reference or Class inputs are other use case too - I want to pass the same thing around not create an Array. 

Shift registers are better than non-auto-indexed tunnels (other option) as they protect the inputs on zero iterations.

This would remove one step required for most use cases, speeding up my development experience.

Why dont wires have an optional label associated with them.  Style guides have use label long wires but wires have to be moved often during development, and the labels are not fixed to the wire.  This should be maintained for us.  Right click on wire and add label, with ability to lock label to wire source, wire midpoint or wire destination.