LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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Fix XControls

Ok I'm going to try again.

I've already posted ideas on XControls before HERE and HERE but here's another try.

My feeling is that XControls COULD be a wonderful addition to the LabVIEW universe. However....

1. XControls are kind of weird. The implementation is kind of unusual and I finf the help available being not overly helpful. I HAVE implemented XControls but I find myself having to re-scratch my head every time I take on such a proposal. I would love a more intuitive way to work with XControls. Even a state diagram showing what's called when would help.

2. XControls are buggy. I've reported on these before but NI seems to not take this seriously. There are two issues which make XControls unusable for me (I'm willing to overlook the complexity).

2a. Synchronicity. Updating a value to an XControl terminal will return control to the calling code IMMEDIATELY event hough the XControl may require some time to process tha data. This is completely inconsistent with existing LabVIEW behaviour.

2b. Dynamic events don't work properly with XControls. If I register for a dynamic event in an XControl, firing the event will not "awaken" the XControl but the events will queue up until a valid event DOES happen at which point all the backlogged events get processed in a hurry.

If points 2a and 2sb w2ere addresses, 99% of my problems would go away but at the moment, XControls are just not worth the effort for most applications I could otherwise use them for.

Come on NI, you can do better.

Shane.

Increase download speed

This is not directly related to LabVIEW but I haven't found any other thread which seems like a better fit. I'm posting it on the Idea Exchange since this is the best place for other customers to potentially agree with me.

NI drivers/software are quite often large, and above 1 GB is not uncommon and sometimes above 3 GB. Having everything in a single file is in my opinion a good thing because I don't have to look for multiple driver parts and download packages, but the file size must be matched by the download speed. Waiting three-four hours or more to download a single driver is not a fun thing to do and quite often you need more than one driver.

Sometimes the speed is okay, but as a general rule I would say it's slow. I'm located in Sweden and of course this issue is dependent on a lot of links between where I am located and the server where NI host the files.

But, download speeds of 200-300 KByte/s from NI are not uncommon but I can run speedtests on for example http://www.speedtest.net/ and get download speeds at 50Mbps using American servers.

I don't know how NI host the files, if it's internal servers or something else but it would be nice if NI looked into the possibility of somehow making this faster.

Now that NXG is going to be discontinued, I guess the NI employees who were working on it will be re-deployed.

There question is to do what??

A part of the LabVIEW community thinks the failure of NXG was partly due to the fact that the team working on it didn't have enough love for LabVIEW-CG and/or not enough experience using LabVIEW-CG in real world applications.

So my suggestion to help them understand better what makes LabVIEW great and what could make it even better is to encourage/force them to spend a fix percentage of their work-time contributing to LabVIEW related open source projects.

What better way to enrich the LabVIEW eco-system and make them feel for LabVIEW at the same time?

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conditional shift register

Conditional Error Ring

When you create an X-Control the icon that you see is the Library's icon (as the X-Control inherits (indirectly) from Library class)

Usually this is just a banner as your icon is used to "group" and identify Library Member VIs (just like any other Library)

However, in the Palettes and Help it shows up like this:

Which is very uninformative (the main issue here is the Palettes) and not pretty.

If you were to go back to your X-Control Library and change the icon to a 32x32 image (e.g. something standard to represent the control) then this icon would propagate through your Library and mess-up/hide Member VI's icons!

Therefore, my idea is that, through the X-Control's Properties Dialog Box you should be able to associated the X-Control Library file with a custom icon.

Initially I thought linking to an external file (.ico or .png) would be good but now I think the above is nicer - storing it in the X-Control Library would be the best.

X-Controls are a special case because currently they are the only Library file that is can be added to the Palettes.

X-Control Properties Dialog, General Settings Subpanel (Concept):

Library Icon would then populate all Member VIs and have the same behaviour as any other Library's icon.

Display Icon would be used when viewing the X-Control file visually e.g Help, Palettes etc...

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While using Highlight Execution for debugging, we end up scrolling the code to know which part of the code is currently executing, and loose context of the code due to scrolling. We could avoid this by letting 'Execution Highlighting' do the scrolling for us. Execution Highlighting with Auto Scrolling can be invoked on demand. The default behavior of the Highlight Execution will not Scroll. We should provide mechanism for users to disable or enable this while executing the code.

Also in case of state machine,

Current Behavior - If one highlights in the middle of execution and when a sub VI is executing, then the highlight will reach the case only after the control returns to top level VI.
This feature should also address the above mentioned behavior by switching to the case(state) in which the sub VI is executing.

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This idea came about from a discussion at http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Require-LabVIEW-R-amp-D-response-to-any-idea-over-N-kudos/idi-p/2228468

The idea is to give LabVIEW users some say in which ideas are implemented. The key components of the idea are:

1) Set aside 5% of NI’s R&D staff to work on the “people’s choice” LabVIEW idea. That’s over 100 R&D staff, so a lot can be done.

2) Take LabVIEW ideas with kudos of 200 or more (there are 39 unimplemented ideas with 200 or more kudos).

3) Put together a poll of these 39 ideas and ask LabVIEW users to vote for their favourite.

4) Keep the poll open for 2 weeks and at the end of the period, take the idea with the most votes and implement it.

5) Once the idea is in beta, another "people's choice" poll is conducted and the process repeated. (Small ideas get implemented quickly, bigger ideas presumably are worth the wait.)

The 5% R&D staff, 200 kudos, etc figures can be played with to get the desired result.

I think we'll get more smiles on our faces from the 5% of R&D staff working on the "people's choice" project than we'll get from the 95% working on the "marketing's choice" projects.

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Scenario: I have a section of code that has missing subVIs and controls (they're typedefs), and I want to disable it. I put a diagram disable structure around the code, and it means that the missing VIs are okay, but LabVIEW still requires the typedef'd controls to be loaded <- this causes a broken arrow, even through the only broken code is within the diagram disable structure.

Fix: If the only reference to a typedef control is within the disabled case of a diagram disabled structure, then it should be ignored (and therefore should have to be loaded).

Last element index

It would be preety nice if all the VIs that can be indexed in any way (for example string and array operations) would accept "n" and "n-1" and such as input to denote that the user want the last element/character/etc. or the element before the last and so on.

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The "Separate compiled code from source file" option is super nice for use with revision control software. However, sometimes the option to do so is not available:

This is usually because you have an express VI included somewhere in that VI's hierarchy. It would be nice to offer a means of displaying what those "conflicts" are--maybe a button to display a separate dialog, or to launch the search function with results of all the included Express VIs or any other potential conflicts. LabVIEW must know what those conflicts are--that's how it knows when to gray out the above option! So, how about a more detailed response as to why it has done so!

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Hi,

I have come across various occassions where I would like an entire folder of VIs to be saved for previous.

In a situation where I have a project and a top-level VI, it is easy to do a save for previous. But there are situations where the folder contains VIs that are not directly linked to each other, and the save for previous version doesn't work for all of the VIs. Typically the VIs for such projects are also under the same folder.

So in the lines of Mass Compiling a folder, it would be nice to have a tool that does a Mass Downgrade (or Save for previous) for a particular folder, LLB etc.

Currently I do it by using a Save.For Previous API. If this is a situation that occurs for many folks, it would be a good idea to have this option available.

This one is really getting to me lately. I have already admitted to being a Right-Click-ohalic, but I am also a script-ohalic and sometimes XML-ohalic. I have many situations where I have an array of references which I need to iterate over. Should be very simple, wire the array to a for loop and add the appropriate property or invoke node. Creating property or invoke nodes from a right-click menu is very efficient, you get the list for whatever reference type you clicked on. For some reason, auto-indexed tunnels in for loops do not allow you to Create Property for ... or Create Method for... If you manually wire a property or invoke node to the tunnel you get the proper class so it shouldn't be too hard to skip that step and create the property/method by right-clicking the tunnel.

There are a number of very useful Mathscript routines which are not available in the LabVIEW Math or Analysis libraries. I would like them to be made available on the LabVIEW palettes as well. Those I can think of are:

Contour - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctions\contours
Delaunay - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctions\delaunay
Convex Hull - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctionSupport\geometry
Polygon Area - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctionSupport\geometry
Interpolate 2D for Scattered Data - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctions\intrp2d_uneven
Complex Bessel - vi.lib\imath\engines\lvmath2\RunTimeEngine\BuiltInFunctions\bessel_[hijky]

Some even already have nice looking icons

Are there more?

The current set of Bessel functions supplied in LabVIEW Core only allow for real arguments and outputs. This limits the usefulness of LabVIEW in certain areas of science where complex Bessel functions are required for calculations (i.e.. acoustic modeling). The Mathscript RT module has Bessel function calls that support complex arguments so it's not like the coding doesn't exist. This is one area where LabVIEW is deficient as compared to Mathematica and Matlab and can be easily corrected without forcing the user to buy the Mathscript RT Module.

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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Fix XControls

Fewer steps when downloading and installing LabVIEW from web

Increase download speed

Make NXG dev team contribute to LV related open source projects

Free Copy of LabVIEW For Accepted Idea

conditional shift register

Conditional Error Ring

X-Control Display Icon (so an .xctl looks good in the Palettes)

Execution Highlighting with Auto Scrolling

People’s Choice LabVIEW Idea Implementation

Putting a disable structure around a typedef front panel node on the block diagram shouldn't require the typedef to be loaded

Block Diagram Cleanup should replace any Stacked Sequence Structure

Allow user to select the which NIC to use for network connections when multiple NICs are present

Last element index

Implement More than 14 User Ideas in the Next Version of Labview

Show "Conflicts" if a VI cannot separate compiled code from source File

Mass Save for Previous Option (Mass Downgrade) similar to mass compile

Create Property or Invoke Nodes from Auto-indexed tunnels

Include Mathscript routines on LabVIEW palettes

Update the Bessel functions to allow for complex arguments