LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Big clusters... we've all needed to work with them.

Currently, to change from one cluster element in a bundle/unbundle, clicking on the element name brings up context menus with the hierarchical structure of the cluster...from the beginning. Say you want to move to the next element in a cluster at a certain level, you have to navigate all the way through the hierarchy. You could drag down and then rewire and delete, but that's still more effort than feels right.

How about changing the appearance and functionality of (un)bundle by name so that each section of the cluster name is a clickable link. Clicking on it would allow me to browse the hierarchy at that level, so click on the last element (currently Port) would show me the following option:

There's only one option at this level at the moment, but if I were to do the same on the Laser Settings section, it would drop down a menu with All Elements, <redacted section>, Laser Marker Mode and Laser Settings.

Simple thing:
It will be nice to have context help with monospaced font. The functionality of this help currently is very poor but with monospace font we will be able to add e.g. simple "arrays" and probably many more others descriptive things that can be usually found in e.g. .h files.

Below simple character based array in notepad++ and in LV context help.

Regards,

Michał Bieńkowski

I am struggling with my Event Structure event list and the corresponding list of cases in the parallel consumer loop Case Structure.

Both have currently over 100 cases each and finding one or scrolling down to access the latest one has become painful due to the lack of a scrollbar in these lists.

For instance, here is the Event Structure list:

Same goes for the list of controls in a Local Variable (and other objects, I am sure).

There is no reason why such lists do not have a vertical scrollbar when that corresponding to a Enum do have a scrollbar:

Or is there?

Suggestion: All long pulldown lists should have a vertical scrollbar

99% of the time when I use a Diagram Disable Structure, I am disabling code with an error cluster wired through. I don't want to lose the errors coming in, just the single operation, so I manually wire the error cluster through the empty case each time.

I've talked to others in the past about this and it would be nice for LabVIEW to be all-knowing and wire all datatypes through that match, but that would definitely lead to conflicts and mistakes. Error clusters, on the other hand, are simple are nearly always a single wire in and out.

Simply auto-wiring the error cluster input to the output would make the debugging process much easier.

Code with disabled operation:

It would be useful to have something like a referenced comment. You can place this comment in the block diagrams of several VIs of a project, and by editing one instance of this comment, it will change all instances at one time.

Example:

The comment describes the channel list of an application:

Comment:

AI_00: Torque [Nm]

AI_01: Pressure [bar]

AI_02: ValvePosition [%]

[...]

You place this comment in the DAQ-VI. But it would be helpful to have the identical comment in the MeasFile-VI and/or in the VI that combines the channel and scaling informations to a 2D-string array, so you can present all these informations together (e.g. in a multi cloumn list box or something else).

When you later add some new channels e.g., it will be annoying to edit all these comments step by step, something like a 'comment type def' would be a practical solution.

 which it is still not doing in LabVIEW 2015.

Example:  I graph a temperature input, using auto-scale on Y.  The end-customer complains that the temperature suddenly started rising at the wrong time.  I try (futily) to explain that the rise was only 0.01 degrees, but the scale on the graph expands it to fill the screen.  Then someone else comes in, and we repeat the conversation.

What I'd like is a feature to keep auto-scale, but set the minimum span.  For example, set the minimum span to 10 degrees:

The story is similar for integer charts.  Too often, a value is on the bottom of the chart, or on the top, and all you see easily are vertical lines

With an auto-scale-min-span of 1.1, it would look better:

I use a lot of very generic programming, so may not know if I should set the minimum span to 1.1 for boolean values.  For that case, it would be great to have a feature that makes the auto-scale go X% beyond the min & max values.  In this case 5% would give the results above.

One more feature (one I've written programmatically, and it's a MAJOR pain):  set auto-scale to only scale up if the data is less than 50% of the current span, and scale down as needed (but over-shoot to anticipate more scaling).  It's irritating to watch a graph constantly scaling up and down, especially an XY graph.

And finally (I've also done this programmatically, and it would be tough to make automatic):  lock several chart scales together.  If an operator changes scale on one XY graph, the others change to match.