LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Currently if code is already written, it is difficult to put it into a sequence structure, splitting the code into multiple frames, without breaking wires. It would be great if when I right clicked on the edge of a sequence structure and chose "add frame after" it allowed me to draw the next frame before placing it.

I would also like to be able to selectively split an existing frame up

Wouldn't this be easy and intuitive?

I tried to look for other ideas like this on the exchange and all I found was this but he was a little confusing in explaining his idea and how would it work. 

SVG would be a great image format for icons. It would also be nice if you could use it for front panel designs or as background images. Exporting a VI as an SVG might also be a nice way of printing a VI or copying it into a presentation.

The advantage would be that it's scalable and an W3C standard.

(see also  http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=449853#M449853 )

I continually find myself fussing over the "configuration" of terminals. There are many permutations of icon/condensed view and label alignment, yet little consensus thus far for a standard.

My goal is to convince you this: Having different "flavors" of terminals does not make LabVIEW easier to understand or more "customized" to your preferences or learning style. Instead, it creates a source of confusion for new users to identify these Block Diagram components, and creates a hassle when it comes to formatting new or existing VIs to "your style". And no more label gymnastics trying to fit what should be a  into a  or a .

Just a few Common Terminal Configurations:

1. Default Alignment - Not too bad, but not so great for stacking terminals vertically
2. Block Diagram Cleanup Tool - Interesting choice of label alignment...
3. CTRL+Space then CTRL+T - This is the "best" style, but it falls short in correctly aligning label in Icon View (arguably of inconsequence, since Icon View is not "best" style)
4. The "Rogue Drag" alignment - Now where'd that label go?
5. The "Monk" alignment - Everything has to be perfectly snapped to center
6. The "There's a 'Size to Text'??" alignment - AKA - "This is what happens when I open your VI on my system" alignment
7. The "Don't Stop - Believing - Hold on to that Feeeeling" label - I can't let go of LV 4.0 or Power Ballads
8. The "But it takes up too much BD space - I'm'a remember what it's called" guy - or worse - "Neat, terminals can all have blank labels!!"

1. Default Option: Do NOT Place FP Terminal as Icon
2. Separate label locations for Controls and Indicators
3. Lable Position Options
4. Add a setting to allow different label positions for controls and indicators

Quite often I find myself running a new bit of code which contains an untested modal subvi somewhere in it's bowels, to find that the when called the modal subvi doesn't exit. Clearly there's a little bug in my code, but now I'm stuck. The modal vi has all the focus of LabVIEW, I can't close the vi, I can't abort the vi. Nothing is accessible, including the Project Explorer window.

Now what I need here is a LabVIEW Running VIs Task Manager, which allows me to simply scroll down a list of open and running vis, and abort the one that's stealing my focus.

It would probably have to operate outside the development environment to avoid being supressed itself, but presumably a standalone executable can link into LabVIEW through the server port and access the list of running vis with server calls.

This would save me from having to use Windows Task Manager and killing LabVIEW (and potentially any unsaved work)

When customizing a boolean control, there are 6 pictures you can set. On, Off, On to Off transition, Off to On transition, Off Hover and On Hover. But setting those pictures can be a pain since they aren't labeled. Here is a screen shot of a page from the UI Interest group. Adding those labels to the menu would be very helpful when creating custom buttons.

Local Variables. When a VI has a hell of a lot of Controls or Indicators, creating a Local Variable can be a pain. The list to choose from can get very, very long, sometimes so long that it needs a scrollbar.

The current method of selecting which control a Local is connect to looks like so:

All in all, not too bad. I like the alphabetical ordering, and the fact that you can type to choose one.

However, from this image you have no idea what datatype each of these variables are (the name helps a bit). I suggest adding the Data Type and Control/Indicator information to this menu like so:

You can now easily see that "Params" is a cluster control, "XY Graphs" is an array of Refnums control, and "Vg Points" is an indicator array of I32. Notice that the datatypes are color coded and look similar to the block diagram icon.

In addition to this simple display change, it would be nice if there were an option somewhere in the preferences that sorted this list in different ways. Perhaps two different options: 1. First by Alpha, then by Type - or 2. First by Type, then by Alpha.

For those of you who prepend a data qualifier to the beginning of your controls and indicators (such as "str_Input1" or "dbl_Numeric"), this will still help you via the color coding. Plus you probably don't do that for ALL your controls, ones that end-users will be modifying when you release your code.

.net and many other languages have an intuitive and simple way to allow you to define how a window behaves when you resize it: anchors.  Anchors allow you to define the distance between an edge of a child control and the edge of a parent control regardless of the size of the window. The size of the control itself stays constent unless it violates the rules of the defined anchors in which case it changes sizes to meet those rules. For example a front panel with the following anchors:

Would be resized into: