LabVIEW Idea Exchange

I would be nice if the Clear Error primative was modified so that it's icon was not the full subVI size, but rather smaller which would help to keep the block diagram neat and clean.

The most common icon that I use in LabVIEW has a "title" section at the top.  It is so common, that when this is used, LabVIEW moves the Text Entries below it.  BUT, they don't allow for automatic entry INTO the title field.  Instead they allow 4 lines of text that all gets compressed when you use 4 lines of text.

Instead of the 4th line of text, how about an entry for the Title, it will appear in the small window at the top of the icon.

1. Allow for "Tabbed Browsing" of VI's to better manage windows.

2. Allow for the BD to be open independent of the FP.

3. Allow dockable palettes... dock to either the edge of the screen, or to the top bar (pictured below) of LabVIEW.

4. As a bonus, consider being able to open PDF's, txt's, and html's in tabs also for Help and documentation.

5. Finally, allow the project tree to be docked into the IDE.

Please, add your own IDE upgrade ideas in this discussion - illustrations will be especially helpful here. If it's a major enough idea, create a new idea!

Edit >> Create SubVI:  I almost never use this function... but it could be so nice!

Imagine being able to develop code on some diagram, check functionality in line, and quickly generate a subVI.  We're so close with "Create SubVI", but in 7+ years, I've never really used it.

Suggested Tweaks:

1) Use default connector pane (12 terminals)
2) If there are error clusters, wire them to the bottom terminals.
3) If there are error clusters, auto create a case structure and put the code in the No Error case.  Wire the error cluster through the Error case.
4) If there are in and out references (e.g. File In, File Out), wire these to the top terminals.
5) Run Clean Up Diagram.

I believe the main issue with this is what to do with the outputs from the subVI (since you won't be able to use them) and I can think of two options:

1. This option would be settable at edit time and would break the caller if you wire any of the outputs.

2. This option would be settable at run-time and you would get default data from the outputs and an error or warning from the error out terminal of the node if you wire any of the outputs.

This one of my very old ideas and goes all the way back to InfoLabVIEW. I recently got reminded in this thread to write it up as an idea. You might have heard it before. If not, read it :D)

Currently, an output tunnel gets the default value for the given datatype if "use default if unwired" is enabled and a case executes where it is not wired. Recently, we also got the "linked tunnels" feature, which is more like an editing assistant.

Many times we have a big stack of cases but the computation of many outputs is shared by many cases, maybe with one or two notable exceptions. 😉 It would be cool to be able to define this shared "default" code only once so it is executed unless we create an exception case.

My suggestion is to have a new, special case that allows us to define the output of each tunnel for cases where it does not receive an overwriting input.

The image shows a few possibilities for an event structure (same applies for all other relevant structures).

A: A reference is wired across by default. We don't need to wire across any other case.

B: Nothing is defined, so it acts like today. This is the default, so everything is automatically backwards compatible with existing code.

C: A number is incremented with each iteration unless we overwrite in a specific case

D: The default output is based on the operations of several inputs.

E: If a tunnels is unwired, we get NaN (or whatever we need) instead of zero. For I32 me might want -1, for example.

F: Same as A. This is similar (but not exactly the same) as linked tunnels. (I.e. It also applies to existing unwired cases)

G: This tunnel is defined in all cases. If we add an unwired case later it would act like B.

H: (not shown): certain global event terminals (e.g. time) should also be available in the "default definition case", because we might want to utilize it for a default output.

 Downconversion would be somewhat messy. It would probably need to wire the relevant default operations into all cases where an output is not wired, keeping the functionalty the same.

Searched and didn't find this.  I know you can format the text manually.  Comments should be colorized automatically.

We've all seen it: The annoying 1-pixel bend when wiring between VIs with mismatched connector panes. Many ideas have been proposed to address this on a small scale... But I think it can easily be improved on a much larger scale.

IDEA:

Modify the way the 5335 connector pane is rendered so that the top and bottom terminals line up with those of the standard 4224 connector pane.

In case the image doesn't say it all, all I'm proposing is that the top-left terminal of the 5335 connector is made 1-pixel larger by stealing 1-pixel from the terminal below. Likewise for the top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right.

The obvious benefit is that it becomes much neater to wire errors and references between mismatched VIs. Goodbye OCD!