LabVIEW Idea Exchange

When you use XControl in your Ui it's quite difficult to navigate into facade VI controls using tab key. Management of this navigation require a lot of work.

A way to fix this may consist in adding an "get focus" event to the facade VI. This event should be trigged each time XControl receive the focus in the Ui.

In addition to this event, we need to be able to have way to go out the facade VI when all reachable controls have been browsed.

Use case :

I've done an simple XControl containing only a string control with a "PlaceHolder" string. When string control is empty you configure it to display a "ghost" text to help user to fill in each fied with the right data.

If implementing "placeHolder" feature in the XControl was done in 4 hours, adding the capacity to navigate through each XControl and other object in the Ui has requiered 1 day and I can't ensure that my implementation is free of bug... 

Recently LabVIEW has added the following feature: When creating a new wire, double-clicking creates a terminal. This can be an indicator or a control, depending on what was selected. If the wire was started from a data sink (a structure tunnel or a subVI or node input terminal), holding down the Ctrl key while double-clicking creates a constant. This is very useful and saves time. Kudos!

When working with cluster wires, it would be useful if an Unbundle By Name node could be created by:

1. Start creating a new cluster wire or wire branch

2. Hold down a modifier key (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, or a combination thereof) and double-click

Step 1: Start creating a cluster wire

Step 2 - current behaviour: double-clicking creates a terminal. This is useful. Holding modifier keys down (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) does not alter the behaviour.

Step 2 - desired behaviour: Holding modifier key + double-click creates Unbundle By Name node

Notes

• Creating UBN nodes is a common, repetitive action when working with clusters. This gesture would save time.
• The screenshots above show a cluster wire being created starting from a control terminal. The gesture should, of course, work regardless of which object the wire branch was started from (e.g. tunnel, subVI output terminal, etc).
• Perhaps the idea can be expanded to creating Bundle By Name nodes. Perhaps one modifier key (e.g. Ctrl) would create a UBN node, while another key (e.g. Alt) would create a BBN node.

I spent a good chunk of time yesterday trying to find out why I was getting a Wires Under Objects VI Analyzer failure, and after much paring down of code and fiddling with wires it turned out to be a hidden event data node that was running over a wire.  Below is a simple reproducing example; the second image is identical to the first, except that the event node has been hidden (but not moved).  Both of the images below fail the Wires Under Objects test, and my argument is that the one on the right should not fail that test.

Event node visibleEvent node hidden

The point of the feature "hide the event data node" is so that I, as a LabVIEW developer, no longer have to worry about it cluttering my block diagram and it running into/over other items.  However, hiding it ultimately results in me still worrying about where it is hidden because it running into/over other items still turns out to matter when I run static code analysis. From this POV, this is a bug, and the VI analyzer test shouldn't fail.

This POV is also consistent with the way that hiding for/while loop iteration terminals operates.  In the images below (again, the second image is identical to the first, where the iteration terminal has been hidden but not moved), ONLY the left image fails the same VI Analyzer test, and this is the behavior I'd like to see with the hidden event node: