LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Current behavior:

When saving a new .lvlib inside a .lvproj the save file dialog brings me to the last saved location which is often a different repo.

Desired behavior:

When saving a new .lvlib inside a .lvproj bring me to the root directory where the .lvproj is saved and not the last saved file location. i.e. implement the same behavior as when saving a VI inside a library or a class. This would solve the issue of VIs accidentally being miss-saved outside of the project folder and then getting lost.

Often when I want to look at the structure of a complex data type containing nested typedefs, I find the data type description in the Context Help quite heavy/verbose.

For example, could you tell at first glance how many levels of hierarchy there are in this data structure ?

Well, actually there are 5 levels (including the root cluster), but this is obfuscated by the unnecessary levels added by typedefs.

The description could be much more concise:

Here is an alternative that keeps the typedef type descriptions and appends them after the typedef name. However I'm not sure about this one because it could create description texts that are too long to be displayed in a single line:

Also for the configuration, it could be an option in "Options > Environment" and/or a button in the Context Help:

What are your thoughts ?

Raphaël.

Show the Context Help for packed project library VI terminals. Without it, development suffers. For example, a wire conflict occurs but the nature of the source or sink type is not available for inspection.

One of the most common operations performed on arrays is to determine whether an element is found inside the array or not.

There should be a function that is dedicated to this fundamental operation. My workaround is to use the "Search 1D Array" function followed by a "Greater Or Equal To 0?" function, as seen below. While it only takes a few seconds to drop the geqz function using Quick Drop, it's still slightly frustrating that this is necessary.

The set and map data types rightly have been given the "Element of Set?" and "Look In Map" functions. An equivalent should be provided for arrays.

Thanks! 

When debugging it's common to place a series of probes on a wire that goes into an out-of multiple sequential subVIs (a "rail" wire).

For example, in the screenshot below, we might want to place four consecutive probes, on each of four consecutive error wire segments.

Currently this requires four right-click gestures.

It would be useful to have a "Probe Chain" menu item (not sure if this is the best name, please suggest better ones) just beneath "Probe" or beneath "Custom Probe", or perhaps beneath "Generic Probe" in the Custom Probe sub-menu.

When clicked, the "Probe Chain" would apply a probe to each wire segment in a sequential or consecutive set of wire segments. This would result in the same set of four probes shown in the first screenshot. It would save a few right-click gestures.

Another typical example would be when probing an object or cluster wire.

Notes:

• I'd be happy if the propagation of the probes occurs only in the downstream direction. What I mean is: if the user right-clicks on the wire segment between SubVI B and SubVI C (screenshot above), then probes 6, 7, and 8 would be created (using the numbering in the screenshot above), but probe 5 wouldn't be created because it is "behind" or upstream of the segment where the action was triggered from. I'd be happy if the propagation worked in both directions, but I suspect that the implementation would be slightly simpler for just the downstream direction.
• In the first screenshot above, it would be ideal if the tool would create probe 4. But I'd be happy if the tool would omit creating that probe on the grounds that that wire segment is bifurcated, assuming that dealing with bifurcated wires would make the implementation more difficult.
• Perhaps pseudocode for determining if wire segments are sequential or consecutive (i.e. if they form a "rail") is: if a node takes as input a single wire of a given data type, and outputs a single wire of that same data type, then consider the two wire segments to be part of the same "rail". I wonder if the Quick Drop Ctrl+W tool already implements a similar algorithm, and whether parts of that algorithm could be reused.

Thanks!

I would like it if LabVIEW offered the option of creating Block-Diagram-Only VIs. These VIs would be just like regular VIs, but without the Front Panel window.

BD-Only VIs would be beneficial because:

• They would remove the need to spend a few seconds tidying up the Front Panel of every VI. In a large application most VIs do not have a user-facing GUI. Most of the time tidying up the FP is "busywork" that slows down the developer. (The alternative: creating BD code without ever looking at the FP results in the FP being a mess, which is even more undesirable than wasting a few seconds to tidy the FP up.)
• They would reduce the developer workload, thus making developers faster.
• They would reduce the surface-area of the codebase.
• They would replicate functionality that exists in all text-based languages where creating functions or methods does not involve "touching" a GUI.

BD-Only VIs would be my default choice for small, low-level VIs that serve as subVIs deep inside my application. For example, does a VI that takes "a", "b", and "c" as inputs, and outputs "3D Distance = sqrt(a^2 + b^2 + c^2)", really need a GUI (the Front Panel)? Do most class accessor VIs really need a GUI (the Front Panel)?

Notes

• I realise that implementing BD-Only VIs is not trivial. But I believe that the benefits would far outweigh the implementation cost.
• The Connector Pane functionality would have to be implemented in the Block Diagram. This has already been suggested by CaseyM in a comment to his popular Make the default behavior of opening a VI open ONLY the block diagram idea: "Hell, you could even add the connector pane wiring functionality to the BD - then I'd have even less reason to go to the FP on most VIs."
• Steen Schmidt has aluded to the need for BD-Only VIs in a comment from 2014 to the popular Allow ONLY the Block Diagram to be opened Without Front Panel idea: "But this idea of Jack's here is about being able to have the BD open only, and leave the FP closed. Not about having VIs without FP at all (that discussion is a totally separate one, which we will have hammered out in due time :-)."
• I would be happy if, for technical reasons, BD-Only VIs would use a dedicated file extension, for example ".vibd", similar to how malleable VIs use the dedicated file extension ".vim".
• It would be ideal if BD-only VIs could be converted to regular VIs, and vice-versa. But I would be happy if, for technical reasons, this is not possible or too difficult to implement.

Thanks!

The asterisk (*) that LabVIEW automatically places in the title bar when a file is modified should be placed first not last so that it can be seen when the window is too narrow to display the whole string, e.g. where other programs like Notepad.exe put it when then text truncation is indicated by an ellipsis (...). Some titles can be much longer when they include lvlib and lvclass contexts.

It would be really nice if double-clicking column header separators in tables, trees, and multicolumn listboxes automatically resized the columns based on their contents (like Microsoft Excel). This would be useful in these types of controls and indicators at both edit and run time. It would also be useful to have this capability interactively (initiated by the developer or user) and programmatically (through properties or methods).