Let's say I have a class with a few public VIs, and several private VIs and typedefs:
Assuming I'm not working on a VI within the class, If I'm using this class on a block diagram, I can only use the public VIs.
However, if I right-click on the class wire, and go to the auto-generated class palette, it shows everything. This can be absolutely overwhelming with larger classes. Why not scope this palette appropriately?
Many common functions include a "found" or "exists" output. Examples include:
Get Variant Attribute
Element of Set?
Config file VIs (Read Key, Write Key, Get Key Names, etc)
Chek if File or Folder Exists
Why then does Look In Map provide an inverted ("not found") output? Wouldn't it be better if it was consistent with other similar functions??
This is most frustrating when replacing existing code using variant attribute lookups with equivalent maps. "Look In Map" is pin compatible with "Get Variant Attribute" except for that one inverted output! This has caught me out on more than one occasion...
When manually analysing a project, we can set the target in which the VIs should be loaded. Unfortunately, VIs with RT code are often broken under windows, leading to wrong test results, or even worse, pop-ups asking for VIs.
Please add an Application Reference Input for the VIAn Run.v.
Maybe this option could also be useful set in the VI Analyzer configuration file?
By default, overrides of interface methods with the default dynamic dispatch connector pane (object in/out and error in/out) look like this:
This means that the default override of interface methods do nothing EXCEPT DROP INCOMING ERRORS, which is bug territory imo. Ideally, they would be scripted to look something like this:
Yes, I know I probably can mess with the project provider to get this. No, I don't want to have to do that! 🙂
Since most (if not all) controls and indicators can be moved around with "position" property node programatically, the X and Y coordinates on the front panel are useful information to have.
As of right now, users have to adjust the position values by trial and error to know what values suit the UI, or maybe make a program to capture the mouse position programatically.
So I've been getting feedbacks from customer about a function where one can view the coordinates of the mouse all of the time. (meaning no programming is necessary)
I have wasted days weeks of my life tracking down why dependencies are loaded in LabVIEW.
This is because the "Why is this item in Dependencies?" tool isn't particularly useful in larger projects. And it isn't particularly useful because it highlights any file in your project (and not in the dependencies) that is dependent (no matter how indirectly) on the chosen file.
In this example, if I click on "Why is this item in Dependencies?" on library C, I get pointed to a VI in the project (A.a) which has a very indirect dependency on library C.
It would be far more useful to me if I instead only got shown the VIs that directly depended on my dependency (even if they were in dependencies themselves). If I then wanted to follow this up the chain, I could just click on "Why is this item in Dependencies?" again, but on the found item.
I´m not to fond of the native Boolean constants and their ability to change value by just a mouse click. To me that is not a behaviour of a constant. What if Pi could be changed to e with a mouse click?
The issue is that when clicking around and cleaning up a messy diagram you may by mistake change a Boolean constant without noticing.
I would like to have native immutable Boolean constants like the ones I´ve implemented with two small VIs. My artwork is perhaps not the best, better ideas are up for anyone´s suggestion.
The help page, that is supposed to provide a starting point for the developers on creating readable, high quality code in LabVIEW seems to be unchanged for quite some time: LabVIEW Style Checklist - NI.
At different workplaces (including NI) and different teams I have seen different implementations of such guides, many of which included extra "rules".
One such example is the file naming convention:
Using spaces for separating words.
Using Libraries to namespace VIs instead of including the noun in every related VI.
These are the most prominent examples I can come up with from the top of my head, but I'm sure that there are more.
I'm curious if an updated version exists somewhere that could be used to replace the above refenced help page?
If there is not, then I think could we collect some ideas here for updating this document.
Currently (in LabVIEW 2010), you can add labels to wires. Hurray!!
But it's painful. Boooo!
Curently => Right-Click wire, navigate to sub-menu of Show>>Label
It should be as easy as adding free text to block diagrams or front panels. For example: If your auto-tool is on then just double-click on freespace to add text.
So we should make it just as easy to add labels to wires:
Step 1: Single-Select Wire
Step 2: Start Typing
Step 3: Profits!
We don't need no stinkin' right-click menus.
PS: I am proposing a single click on the wire instead of double-click because that performs a different action.
(Note that this idea has already been proposed and auto-declined. So I'm trying again, this time with a different UX, and pictures!)
I've got some code on my diagram:
I need to wrap the code in a case structure, so I do:
Then I connect a Boolean wire to the selector terminal and go on my merry wiring way. Unfortunately, I forgot to consider the fact that I need this code to run in the FALSE case, not the TRUE case. But since nothing is broken in my code, I don't realize my mistake until I start running things. I've made this mistake so many times over the years (the most recent being tonight), that I've decided to propose a solution.
There are plenty of times that I want the wrapped code to be in the TRUE case. There are also plenty of times I want the wrapped code to be in the FALSE case. With no obvious default that makes sense most of the time, here's what I propose:
If you interactively drop a case structure by dragging a rectangle around *existing* code, we float a button over where you let go of the mouse and give you a chance to make the visible frame the FALSE case instead of the TRUE case:
(I suck at Microsoft Paint, I'm sure somebody can come up with a better looking button or glyph)
If you click that button, then the case structure turns to the FALSE case. If you do *anything else*, the button goes away and the case stays TRUE.
With this proposed change, any time I wrap existing diagram code with a case structure, I'll be forced to think about whether the case needs to be TRUE or FALSE. And I'm given an easy out if it's supposed to be the TRUE case.
When looking for unexpected behaviour in time or memory usage of a project the Profiler is useful and easier than the execution tracer, but it could be made much more useful by adding the ability to monitor for changes and analyse the issues.
Issue: Currently detecting how the memory or run counts e.g. of a VI changes over time you have to take snapshots, save them and then compare the values in e.g. Excel. (which the saved traces do not directly fit into either...)
Proposed feature: Trends It would be nice if you could just set the tool to automatically sample and log all/selected numbers regularly and then be able to view the trends.
Proposed feature: Automated Analysis Having trends will help in manually detecting issues, but the profiler could also have tools that helped you in this, e.g. highlighting which VIs show a continous growth in memory. This could also then be expanded by being able to call a VI analyzer on any given VI - preferably made/set up to identify possible reasons for a memory leak e.g. (unclosed references, continous array building e.g.).
Pressing Shift and dragging an object with the mouse make it move only horizontally or vertically. Great!
Unfortunately Labview decides which direction to move (horizontally or vertically) based on the first pixel the mouse moves. So, if you want to move something horizontally, but while clicking your mouse moves one pixel vertically, you're stuck with that direction and can start over again. ☹️
"Normal" applications decide the direction to move based on the ratio of x/y mouse movement: If the mouse moved more in vertical direction, the user obviously wants to move that way, if the mouse moved more in horizontal direction, then that is the user's intent. This means you can switch the direction while dragging and you're not stuck to one direction!
PLEASE modify the annoying behavior of Labview accordingly!
I currently have a project with an auto-populating folder for documentation. That documentation is included in my Installer build specification.
If I regenerate that documentation while the project is open, the auto-populating folder sees it disappear from disk and removes it from my installer! No notification, nothing. Just completely silent. This has resulted in shipped installers with missing documentation
I propose this should work the same way any other dependency does if it disappears from disk. It should break the installer from building and show a warning sign that the dependency is missing.
It's a little annoying to try to draw long wires to a terminal that's currently off screen -- you have to hold your mouse at the edge of the screen and LabVIEW slowly scrolls the window (Shift will speed this up a little bit). Currently, neither the mouse wheel nor the touch pad work for panning/scrolling while a wire is currently in progress.
As an improvement, it would be great if the mouse wheel allowed panning the diagram while the new wire was still in progress.
Even if you don't (yet) work with LV classes, you may have noticed that they are starting to become increasingly widespread in the LV world. In fact, the excellent new Actor Framework that ships with LV2012 relies heavily on classes. LV classes are great but they can impact on your performance as a developer as your application becomes larger. I'd encourage everyone to click the magic KUDOS button for this idea, since classes will likely affect us all sooner or later!
The problem:
Most class-based architectures contain some degree of linking. One form of linking is inheritance where parent-child relationships are implicitly defined, and another form of linking arises from nesting libraries where classes (e.g.) are placed inside other libraries.
Unfortunately as the linking increases in a project, the IDE starts to become very sluggish! Those who have worked on mid-sized class-based applications know the symptoms:
Opening the "class properties" window takes 10 seconds or more
Renaming a class brings the editor to a standstill
For many projects these symptoms are a minor annoyance, but as your project grows they can become a serious impediment to productivity. Why should it take over 30 seconds to modify a class's inheritance?!
Obviously careful design can reduce linking to some extent, but that just postpones the pain. The reality is that all class-based projects start to suffer from these symptoms once they reach a "resonable" size.
The idea:
Improve the responsiveness of the LV editor when working with classes.
Highly repetitive tasks such as editing a class library's icon deserve a snappy response from the IDE, regardless of how many classes I have loaded!
Modifying inheritance is a fundamental operation. It should be quick and easy! (See this related idea)
Placing classes in libraries promotes good project organisation. It should *not* bring the editor to a grinding halt!
Credits:
Others have written about this topic well before me. Here are a few relevant discussions:
At least not at first. The compiler could inline each prototype and when called repetitively, use normal recursion. But that would be next level, and maybe not even desirable.
The scalar string input is simply not a stable input for this malleable VI. It will always result in infinite recursive compiled code. So, this should break the caller.
Of course, it should be perfectly legal to have a disabled type specialization case that calls the same prototype. As long as it's not actually compiled, that's perfectly valid:
LabVIEW's units support angular measurements of degrees, minutes, seconds, radians and steradians but I don't see support for a full revolution. If this was added, we could use 'rev/min' as a unit which is a very common unit.
I think that users don't really use units as much as they might because of limitations such as this. There are some other things that I would like changed with units, but this should be and easy one to fix.
