LabVIEW Idea Exchange

I couldn't find a similar topic so sorry if it's already been asked 🙂

When adding an VI into a loop, container or select case, I do always trying to reverse-wire the inputs like the error input.

Unfortunately, LV will not recognize the datatype, if you connect an input from the input to somewhere else.

It's always needed to create the element (constant, front panel element) inside of the loop, move it out, and reconnect.

So it'd be great if you could simply connect the wire to the loop entry and then create there the element.

The updated diagram expansion  (Ctrl+Drag) and its new counterpart (Ctrl+Alt+Drag) is a definite improvement in 2015.

However, they still both act globally on the diagram:

Shrink and obtain this:

All the objects outside of the case structure have been moved around because the shrinking action acted on the whole diagram, whereas my intent was to only compactify things inside the structure.

It would seem that the next step to improve the functionality of these tools is to allow the user to define their scope:

- define a region of interest meaning: DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING OUTSIDE THIS ROI

- perform the action (expansion or shrinking)

In this particular case, this would work like this:

There is still some cleanup to do, but this is much less of a pain that fixing the carpet bomb effect of the current approach.

Arguably, this is easier to grasp with the "shrink" tool, but just think of the exact inverse series of steps to get an idea of the difference between the image at the top and this (the result of the current expand):

We often use multiple instrument APIs in parallel (with occasional sync points). It would be nice if diagram cleanup could recognize that and not interweave them.

Here's a quick and dirty merging of examples from Switch, DC Power, and DMM to illustrate:

Each API is aligned on its own horizontal line. The error cluster is used for sequencing.

This could benefit from some automated squeezing. However, Diagram Cleanup flattens it to a more compact, but argueably less readable form:

If track assignment wasn’t automatic (maybe using the instrument descriptor line), perhaps the user could ctrl-click a set of Vis and assign to a track (track 1 for Switch; track 2 for NI-DCPower; etc.). Then diagram cleanup would place each track on a different horizontal line. If you click and drag a member of an assigned track, the whole track slides up and down together (along with dedicated constants, controls, indicators, etc.), maintaining relative positions. 

We spend a lot of time manually wiring our diagrams to keep the APIs in separate tracks. Diagram cleanup is awesome for small pieces or API-homogenous Vis. If it could keep multi-API Vis clean, it would make our code development and documentation more efficient.

When adding a control as a cluster constant it's important to see what's the controls name in order to use the constant correcty.

As you can see on the right side of the image there's how a control will be added when you drag&drop it into the block diagram.

To show every label it's quite a lot of work to click on each single item (it's hard enough to hit the control correctly!) open the contect menu and select "Description" to show up.

It'd be a great relief, if you can simply select "Show all labels" to perform the same operation with 3 but 20 clicks.

Also there should be a function to automatically select if the text should be upper, lower, left or right to the constant.

When we have multiple Enum values using a same case it is difficult to see what are the values using it. It would be good if we have a Tip strip showing the values handled in that particular case would be more meaningful instead of having "Selector Value" as a tip strip.

There is also an idea on removing the tip strip totally and it got fair response.

Please ignore if already suggested!