LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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If you are using Global Variables in a project, and you drag the control from the Global VI's front panel to the block diagram of another VI, the item gets placed on the BD as a constant. It is more desirable that this action drop as a global variable node associated with the dragged control. If either the global VI in the project or the global VI's icon is dragged to a diagram then the result is a global variable node, but then always defaults to the first control in the global so you have to manually change it (this default choice is natural as LV would have no clue which control you wanted, fair enough).

This idea is to create some way of moving a control from the front panel of the global VI to the block diagram of another VI in such a way that LabVIEW knows to drop a global variable node instead of a constant. Because changing the standard behavior for dragging a control from any panel to any diagram would result in user interface inconsistencies, the suggestion is that ctrl+alt+drag be used to indicate that the user is performing a special drag, and when this drag is from the FP of the global VI to the diagram of another VI, LabVIEW should drop a global variable node.

Note: before I get people commenting that GVs are bad bad bad and should be removed, this idea does not attempt to rationalise the need for (or hatred of ) GVs, lets try and leave that for a different thread.

Message Edited by Laura F. on 10-07-2009 12:27 PM

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Timed FOR Loop

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This property use the Z-order to output the array of references to objects in the cluster

This does not make sense !

References to objects in the cluster in a Z-order is completely useless for programmers

this array of References should be in the "Cluster order"

With NI-DAQmx 9.0 and later, you can log data to TDMS files from directly within the DAQmx API. By configuring logging via the DAQmx Configure Logging VI, you can easily integrate TDMS logging into existing applications. Tests with the DAQmx Configure Logging VI have realized data streaming rates of more than 1.2 GB/s. See TDMS Direct Integration in NI-DAQmx Logging.

I propose extending a similar capability to IMAQ Sessions so that when IMAQ Grab Acquire.vi is executed, the raw image data would automatically be streamed to disk (without having to create a copy of all the image data). One of the most difficult and time consuming efforts when acquiring images is saving the data to disk efficiently. It would be highly beneficial and save lots of development time to create a similar functionality for IMAQ. ie an "IMAQ Configure Logging (TDMS).vi"

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In Place Elements without the box

I use a lot of clusters in some apps and using the in place element box can make the diagrams significantly larger and a bit unwieldy if you need to do some complex calculations. My idea is this:

right click on the increment icon:

Click on "Inline":

The box indicates that it is an inline operation so we also don't need to define the receiving cluster as labview knows that it is the same as the source cluster. The receiving cluster can now be placed where it is most convenient rather than being tied to the in place element box.

The Labview Web Services should support digest access authentication (RFC 2617) in stead of NI's own inventions NI Auth and NI API Key (the latter is broken in 10.0f2). Digest access authentication is becoming a standard and is intended to replace basic access authentication since it doesn't send passwords in plain text over the web. It is very useful for cases where HTTPS cannot be used, for example for performance or legal reasons.

Digest access authentication does not require Silverlight at the client side like NI Auth does - it requires only a recent browser. In this way the choice of HTTP clients is much less restricted and for example a cell phone can be used too.

It shouldn't be that difficult for NI to get this done, the webserver behind it already supports it. Of course the Labview HTTP Client should also support digest authentication.

wire jumping across case structure

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When you have a lot of cases (or events) in your case (or event) structure it can be tedious to go back and forth between them (yes, Ctrl + Mouse wheel works great but can be hit and miss to get to the right one that is many cases away). Often times I am in one case, I need to grab/do/look at something in another case and then return to the case I am working on. It would be nice to have a Back and Forward button (similar to a web browser) so after I can quickly jump back to where I was. The only way to do it now is to click on the case titles, scroll up/down (which can be very tedious if you have enough cases that it goes off-screen) to switch between.

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Native dynamic tab control

There are several ideas here about making the LabVIEW IDE support a dynamically tabbed interface where front panels &/or diagrams are shown on different pages of a tab in the same window.

But so far (?) I have not seen anyone suggest to support such a user interface element as a control on the front panel itself (i.e. available for use in the applications we make with LabVIEW). Such functionality is currently only available from a third party (this is in other words really their great idea, my contribution is only that I would want to push this into becoming a native control type):

SAPHIR have made a very nice XControl named XTab, it is free and available through the LabVIEW Tools Network - but personally I hesitate to use it in any of our products as this would make us depend on future support from Saphir.

If it was offered as part of LabVIEW, I would have adopted it right away. Please, can we have a native XTab?

Here is how XTab from SAPHIR works:

Xtab-PictureViewerDemo by SAPHIR-Videocast

I have a case where a user is supposed to control and run test on a number of connected products (gas analysing probes).

Each product is connected with an RS232 port and also to its own water pump. Before running the tests, the user should assign an RS232 port and a pump ID to each product. When that is done, data like serial number, FW version and status (OK, clogged...) is shown.

A UI good solution would be an array of clusters containing some controls (COM port, pump ID) and indicators (serial number, FW version, status), but this can't be implemented in LabVIEW.

However, each product can preferrably be controlled and monitored with a sub-VI and as all products are identical (except serial numbers and so on), instances of the same VI file can be used (with re-entrant and so on). The front panel of the sub-VI would look something like this:

Now you could show all these front panels as subpanels in the main VI, but the only way to do this in today's LabVIEW seems to be placing as many subpanels you would need on the front panel.

However, this design is really poor as it wouldn't be scalable. The ideal solution would be having an array of subpanels:

Array of subpanels.png

Then you could add and remove subpanels/products as you like, and also easily step through them by using a for loop in the code. The thing is that this can't be implemented in today's LabVIEW.

I really encourage NI to implement this feature as it would give a lot of benefits for both the user and the programmer.

I also encourage all the readers to kodus my suggestion.

I was inspired by the idea 'Color properties should default to colorbox data' to post this one.

You can drop the listbox symbol constant from the pallet onto the block diagram. But, if you create a control or convert it to a control, you end up with a numeric control, not a pict ring of the symbols.

It would be nice, when including the listbox symbol in a data structure to allow for it's graphical representation. That way you would not have to lookup the index number with the constant to figure out what symbol had been set in the data structure when you are debugging.

If there is a work around for this, please let me know!

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In the real world, machine epsilon is a function of the binary representation of a floating point number.

The labview help describes it as:

Machine Epsilon

"Represents the round-off error for a floating-point number with a given precision. Use the machine epsilon constant to compare whether two floating-point numbers are equivalent."

From the term "given precision", we would assume that epsilon depends on the representation. In fact, we can right-click on the machine epsilon and select between SGL, DBL, and EXT.

However, if we look at the actual value, we can see that machine epsilon has the identical decimal value for SGL, DBL, and EXT. No matter what representation we chose, we get the value for DBL.

This is not right!

Suggestion: the machine epsilon must depend on the representation. Since the exact representation of EXT depends on the architecture (64, 80, 96, 128 bits total), machine epsilon for EXT needs to adapt accordingly.

Here's one possible way to calculate machine epsilon explicitly. Note the discrepancy for SGL and EXT.

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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Be able to customize two control at the same time

Changing Chart history length dynamically

Place Global Variables as the actual variable when dragged from the GV window, not as a constant of that type.

Timed FOR Loop

Cluster AllObjs[] Property (Z-order)

TDMS Direct Integration in IMAQ vision image/movie storage

In Place Elements without the box

Digest access authentication support in Application Web Server and HTTP Client

property nodes should accept arrays for the reference

wire jumping across case structure

Back and Forward buttons for Case and Event structures

Change "Recent Files" to only display files within project

Native dynamic tab control

Dynamic UI for set of HWs: Array of subpanels

Listbox Symbol constant should be allowed to be converted to a control and retain the symbol enum display.

Machine Epsilon must depend on the representation and architecture

Windows Print Dialog Box Missing in Labview...

Editing the String Label of Event structures

Search palettes results do not scroll, the diagram behind scrolls instead

separate Vision and Motion palette