LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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Graphs have a plot images property that allows us to draw anything we want on the graph area using picture commands. (example 1, example 2).

I propose to have a similar property for the front panel (or specific pane) area that would allow us to address any pixel and use picture commands at run time (e.g. Plot Images.Front to temporarily circle an area to guide the user or place a huge red warning text across the entire panel in case of a malfunction. We could use Plot Images.back to change a logo or show a connection diagram picture, or similar. (currently, we only have the limited background image property)

This should be entirely cosmetic and should not interfere with the operation of controls, etc.

Here's how it could look like at run time...

Separation of Control and Data Typedefs

When using strict typedefs, the automatic inclusion of the typedef in teh actual datatype of a control (and the asociated data passing down the wire) leads to some annoying corner cases.

Imagine a FP with several different strict typedef Booleans (we re-designed and standardised our entire UI recently). If you try to group value change events for these in a single event structure pane then the datatype changes to Variant.... Huh? Because the typedef is a part of the datatype (allowing downstream wires to "create Indicator" or "create Control" with teh correct representation) the IDE realises different wire datatypes and moves to a more generic type (variant).

In this example I don't care that the boolean wire originated from a strict typedef, it's purely for cosmetic reasons. I would ideally like to be able to have a strict representation of the control (which will auto-update if the typedef is modified) with a standard datatype (non-strict wire).

Problem: my code accesses many different properties of many different controls. I need to locate where a specific property of a particular control is read/changed.

I know that the Find panel offersi me the option of searching by text, like

but that is not the solution, because I need to type thename of the property, and because I may match many other objects with the same string (comments, other controls with the same property, etc.)

I'd like a faster way to get to where I need. For instance the contetual menu could offer Find/specific property according to where the right-click was.

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Clean Up Wire function for several wires

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I think there should be an editor option to color the background of structures (while loop, for loop, case, event, etc), based on nesting depth (e.g. only at odd levels), that doesn't have to be saved with the VI, and therefor isn't forced on everyone, but is "opt in" based.

Rationale: I have occasionally seen people color the background of alternating nested structures. My annoyance with it is that there is no standard. One person colors every structure a different random color, another person carefaully uses a single shade of blue for the alternating diagrams, most people don't do either. I think that the option should be a local editor optiion. Like the "show constant folding of wires" option. That way, those that want it, can have it on all the VIs they look at, and those that don't care, can leave it off.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support

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Hello,

When you have to handle events, many times you have to use "defer panel updates" fonctionnality, in order to make your front panel updates more fluent.

It could be nice to include a checkbox in the event configuration window, in order to ask (or not) an automatic defer panel Update.

If check box is checked :

At the begining of the event handler code execution : DeferPanelUpdate = TRue
Execution of the event code
At the end of the event handler code execution : DeferPanelUpdate = FALSE

Manu.net

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LabVIEW 64-bit Statechart Module

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icon

This one is more kind of a cleanup to the algorithm.

In the Front Panel to move a set of objects pressing the arrow button or Mouse drag helps. But one more option to move the objects faster according the grid size is by Holding the shift key and using the arrow key to move. When observed the pixel distance between the object changes in the last method, which is not correct. So it would be great if this is fixed in the feature versions.

To understand the issue please do the following.

Place some controls on the front panel and select all and closely observe the space between each controls.

Try to move the objects to the left or right/up or down and you can see there is no change between the objects. Now Press shift and use the arrow keys and you can observer the pixel space between some of the objects are changing.

The distance between the Chart and the color box is atleast more than 1 grid space.

Here the pixel space between the chart and the color box is less than a grid size.

I am sure this is not an optical illusion. 🙂

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Easy Picture Ring filling

At the moment the only way (I know) to fill a picture ring with pictures is to copy a picture item to clipboard and paste it into the ring. There is no way to programmatically fill the picture ring and afaik this is not planned to be implemented because the ring has to be recompiled and so there is no way at runtime (maybe with scripting?).

To simplify this I'm thinking of a way to convert a picture ring into an array of "2D Picture" items and back. Maybe over right click the ring and select "Convert to picture array" and then same way back by right clicking the picture array and selecting "Convert to picture ring".

The picture array can be filled and handled programmatically and with some programming you can create a simple manager to insert, swap, edit and ... your images, show them in a picture array, copy the picture array data in run-time, paste in frontpanel in edit mode and "Convert to picture ring". Done, easy and simple.

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Currently the Listbox/Multicolumn Listbox can only handle Strings which is not always handy in LabVIEW, we need to convert our numeric values to string, manage the decimals, manage the keyboard to validate the format from user entry...

It would be nice to have an option on the control as we select scalar/array for the selection method, to select string/numeric data content, and then in numeric we could select the representation that we need, I32/U32/Float...

When a cell is editable, it would only accept numeric content, without extra programming, as we would be typing in a Numeric Control.

When the option is chosen, the property node would offer something like an orange "ItemValues" instead of pink "ItemNames".

It would look nicer than a 2D array of numerics which can't have row/column headers. Every cells have the same properties in an array, it's not possible to format each cell separatly. In a multicolumn listbox we can set a background color on a specific cell and so on...

Save Last Value?

We all know the limitation that the "Data Operations"-->"Make Current Value Default" operation when right clicking controls is limited to edit-time only.

I often find myself writing code to save the last value that a user has entered in some sort of ini file (ini, xml, .dat, etc...) so that the next time the code starts up, the last values are reloaded to those controls. I have written some generic code that handles this functionality by wiring in control references. It then monitors those controls for changes and it saves the values to "VI Name"+"_Last.ini". Upon startup it loads the last values from that .ini file. The two attached VI's show this functionality. One VI is a Daemon that spawns the main process asynchronously so that the coder doesn't have to handle it themselves.

It would be nice if this could be handled intrinsically in LabVIEW. What I'm envisioning is a checkbox for every control that, if checked, would function similarly to how the above code works: it would save the control value in a .ini file associated with the owning VI. Since this is built-in it should also have accompanying properties for the control property node so that it could be accessed pragmatically and fired programmatically with the "Value Signaling" property. That would be awesome!

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Wire bend issue to numeric nodes

Hello,

As shown in below image we can see that, if I index numeric array and wire it with any of the node from numeric function it gives un-aligned wire whereas as same process if I use Boolean function at output of index it gives well aligned wire.

So due to this numeric function node wire to index out terminal makes our code with full of wire bends which is not as per NI LabVIEW coding standards also.

So here, I want to draw attention for NI, to do some correction to specific numeric function nodes so we can make neat and clean code in LabVIEW.

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LabVIEW Idea Exchange

"Plot images" for the entire front panel

Separation of Control and Data Typedefs

Find property nodes for specific property only

Compare aggregates option for scalar comparisons

Clean Up Wire function for several wires

Editor option for nested diagram background color

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support

Allow more information-gathering tools when on a non-editable VI

To space objects horizontaly and verticaly by value

Add Defer Panel update checkbox in event management ...

LabVIEW 64-bit Statechart Module

icon

Shift+Move needs proper pixel spacing between objects

Easy Picture Ring filling

Option for Numeric Data in Listbox / Multicolumn Listbox

Hide .lvclass extension on property nodes

Save Last Value?

Wire bend issue to numeric nodes

Use a more random Random Number algorithm in LabVIEW

Make ctrl+click swap the wires on the top and bottom terminals of "In Range and Coerce" function