I often find myself debugging code that seems to have "hangged" and I want to find out which VI is causing the "hang" (maybe it's waiting on some event/queue/message/timeout or maybe it's stuck in an infinite/long loop). There's no really easy way to figure out which subVI (or perhaps a node) is not returning from its call.
My Work-Around
The way that I currently do this is to start opening up VIs and looking at their "Run Arrows" (the run buttons on the VI toolbar) to see which subVIs are currently "running" (being called).
Running (Top-Level VI)
Running (Sub-VI of a Running Top-Level VI)
<< This is what I look for
Not Running (Sub-VI of a Running Top-Level VI)
This technique works OK, but it takes a lot of time to track down the running VI (in applications where there are LOTS of VIs), since you have to just start opening up all your VIs a looking at their run arrows.
Question: Is there any way to look at the run state of a VI using VI Server or Scripting? Unfortunately, the VI Execution.State property is "Running" for all three states shown/illustrated above (the "Idle" state is for VIs that are not reserved for execution, meaning they are not in the hierarchy of a running top-level VI). Maybe I'd also add to my feature request that it would be nice if there were a way to interrogate this state using VI Server or Scripting.
Possible Solution(s)
What would be nicer is if I could ask LabVIEW to Find all Running SubVIs/Nodes and visualize them by their VI Hierarchy. Maybe we could have an option to show the run state in the VI Hierarchy window. And, maybe there could be a way to only show running VIs (hide all Not Running / Idle VIs).
Now, I realize that the VI hierarchy window doesn't have any way to visualize multiple subVI "instances" of a VI, but maybe that could be an option as well (Show all SubVI instances. Also, it would be cool if we could show "Clone" instances of reentrant VIs... but, I digress.
Also, the VI hierarchy window only shows VIs, it doesn't show nodes/functions that might be running (and what's causing my code to "hang"). It might be nice if we could also include nodes, at least for the purpose of helping me find out which nodes are running.
So, I'll end by just stating that I need some easier way to figure out why my application appears to have hung and I hope that this "Idea" leads to more discussion and maybe some more features in LabVIEW to help me debug and visualize my applications.
Do you have any ideas for how to better debug applications that appear to have hung? Do you have ideas for new LabVIEW features that could help?
In LabVIEW IDE, when configuring executable build specifications, under "Version Informtion", it could be greate to have a string control to store free information depending on our version numering management (ex: alpha, beta, release candidate ...). This value could be used as a postfix to the 4 digits version (ex: version "1.3.0.1 alpha 5").
In "Details" tab of Microsoft Windows executable files, the "Product version" metadata is a string so there should be no problem.
At least not at first. The compiler could inline each prototype and when called repetitively, use normal recursion. But that would be next level, and maybe not even desirable.
The scalar string input is simply not a stable input for this malleable VI. It will always result in infinite recursive compiled code. So, this should break the caller.
Of course, it should be perfectly legal to have a disabled type specialization case that calls the same prototype. As long as it's not actually compiled, that's perfectly valid:
Have you ever placed a background image on your front panel to make it look good, but then found that most of the controls and indicators covered everything up?
Ever wish LabVIEW had more appearance customization to make better looking GUIs?
I would like to propose an opacity slider control in the appearance settings tab of front panel object properties. The added setting would not make the entire objects opacity change; ideally the opacity control would only affect the borders and grey space. With this added control users can make better looking user interfaces without having to make custom controls.
Take a look at the difference:
Not Ideal Front Panel with background image and NO Opacity Control
Beautiful Front Panel with background image that you can still see by setting Opacity Control to 50%
Before and After Appearance Settings tab in the Properties Window for a waveform graph:
Currently the only easy way to implement a similar type of setting is go fully transparent by using the tools palette paintbrush tool and setting the color to transparent:
Kudos and share this idea if you want it to happen!
My request is for NI to review and develop the ability to select where (IP specifically) a NSV will deploy on a system (eg. PC) containing multiple networks.
After searching through various forums and issues, I understand that currently we can only choose LabView software's global default adapter via unusual Windows methods. What if other projects do need to use the primary NIC ? or what if in one project I need some NSV to go to primary NIC and some to use the secondary NIC ? As various hacks and workarounds did not fulfill my requirements I opened a request for technical support. After review, the case (#03609821) concluded that this was not possible and suggested I post here to see if others also would find this useful to boost development priority.
My example scenario is this. My company develops specialized motion products (mainly automotive transmissions for heavy duty and defense applications). We primarily use NI in our dyno and own a few NI hardware systems: cRIO, cDAQ, PXI.
I work in the dyno room here and am trying to set up a cRIO as a datalogger and RT OS to primarily measure analog and CANbus signals and thereby control testing.
The test fixture is operated on a PC with two network cards. One private LAN to talk to the cRIO to stream data and control. The network shared variables keep track of various statuses. The other network card is on the company LAN primarily so we can transfer data and share fixture status. The secondary purpose of being on the company LAN is that we have 6 configurable dyno motors (usually used in pairs) in the room that run on a shared master controller (non-NI). Currently that is done via PC RS232 to the cRIO, but we’re planning eventually to transition that to a more open ethernet architecture. NSVs would be ideal for sharing each dynos’ status as the serial is limited in 1-1 connection and bandwidth.
We have (collectively) complained about coercion dots many times on various LV forums -- they are nearly invisible and there are three different kinds, which require different levels of concern. The problem is that there are very few pixels within a terminal and there's no space for any pattern to differentiate the three kinds of coercion (and changing colors is a problem for reasons discussed here in the Idea Exchange).
Another LV developer had an idea that I liked: add an option to view giant coercion dots. We have avoided this because coercion dots bigger than the terminal would interfere with wiring. However, many developers have a policy of eliminating all coercion dots on their diagrams. For those who have such a policy, they could eliminate the coercion dots as they work, and thus might not see any problem from such large dots. Large dots would solve lots of other usability problems that coercion dots have today.
This option could be something in Tools>>Options, but I'd rather it be something in the View or Edit menus so it can be quickly toggled on or off with a shortcut key.
These graphics are "programmer art" -- I just made the three dots look different. Please sumit alternate images for the three dot types if you have better style suggestions. I did make the three dots differ in both pattern and color so that we avoid problems with colorblindness. The type-only was a solid dot, the widening coercion is a bulls eye, and the narrowing coercion is a single ring. Any redesign should definitely take colorblindess into account.
A portal view to the Front Panel elements from the Block Diagram through a feature like "View As Portal". This would be especially useful in the case of G codes doing calculations, simulations, and modelings in the Block Diagram for people like researchers, scientists, and educators.
The help page, that is supposed to provide a starting point for the developers on creating readable, high quality code in LabVIEW seems to be unchanged for quite some time: LabVIEW Style Checklist - NI.
At different workplaces (including NI) and different teams I have seen different implementations of such guides, many of which included extra "rules".
One such example is the file naming convention:
Using spaces for separating words.
Using Libraries to namespace VIs instead of including the noun in every related VI.
These are the most prominent examples I can come up with from the top of my head, but I'm sure that there are more.
I'm curious if an updated version exists somewhere that could be used to replace the above refenced help page?
If there is not, then I think could we collect some ideas here for updating this document.
Title basically says it all but I'll elaborate. With increasing monitor resolution, a 16x16 glyph on a listbox doesn't work very well. On a 4K monitor this is awful tiny. This idea is to support larger glyphs in Listboxes, Multi-column Listboxes, and Trees. Glyphs are used in several places but on favorite of mine is to have item selection with checkboxes,example here. Allowing for these glyphs to grow with the row height would make them appear more cohesive. There is a threaddiscussing this topic, and a work around involving an array of picture rings that is placed over the listbox control. Here is a demo from that thread:
This work around is fine for simple things but doesn't scale well, and doesn't support trees easily. I for instance want to have two trees, where a user can drag and drop from one to the other with the larger glyphs coming along with the drop. Having to handle where the user dropped, and then dynamically building the glyphs to overlay on top of the tree, with indentation, and hiding when a tree's leaf is closedis a major pain. Please NI add a feature allowing for larger glyphs, and I would be so happy.
Suggestion: Double clicking a connected terminal on the connector pane highlights and jumps to the connected control. This would be useful for controls that are off screen or hidden.
Similar behavior to double clicking the associated terminal/icon on the block diagram, where it automatically repositions the front panel's view.
(This is an idea related to Jack's idea here, which however deals with "reshape array".)
When using "built array" with parts that are mismatched in lenght, the largest input wins and the rest are padded with the default value for the given datatype (zero for numerics). This is often not desirable, for example when graphing multiple plots.
Padding with zero causes extra data (zeroes) to show on the graph that did not exist in the original wires. A more desirable option here would be to pad with NaN so only actual data is graphed.
My suggestion is to add an optional input to "built array" that allows defining the pad value is case the inputs are mismatched.
Here is an example how it could look like. (of course the icon would probably need to change a little)
This has been discussed in various places like here, but I couldn't find an idea for it...
There are quite a few LabVIEW primitives which will always run, even if presented with an error on the "error in" terminal. Common examples are "Close Reference" and "Close File".
What would be really useful is to have some kind of visual indication of this behaviour. Ideally this would be a simple marking on the VI icon which could be easily replicated by LV users when we create such VIs ourselves. (It could possibly even be an option in the icon editor!)
Currently the only indication that a VI will run on error is this discrete line in the VI help:
I believe a visual indicator would be much more fitting for LabVIEW as a visual language, and would make this behaviour far more obvious to LabVIEW users.
When entering debug mode (turn execution highlight on) it can be hard to see what is happening.
With event structures it can be hard, but there are subtile changes. Sometimes it's impossible. For instance, if you run this VI, and wait a while, it is impossible to why the VI has not stopped. In this case it's easy to deduce, but it can be really hard. Probes also don't provide a solution here...
SubVI's get a green arrow when they are executing. So, could structures get them as well?
Currently, you can place a probe on a wire while developing, which is an indicator of the data on a wire. I want the ability to CONTROL the data on the wire, with a data forcing mechanism.
The implementation would be very simple... right click on a wire, and in the context menu the option "Force" would be right under "Probe." It would pop up a window of the forcing control, and while the VI is running and forcing is set to "Enable", the programmer can control the values that pass on the wire. If the force window were set to "Disable", the data in the wire would be completely controlled by the VI's logic.
I think the implementation by NI could be trivially simple. If you only allow a forcing control to be added during edit mode (not while the VI is running), the force could be added as an inline VI (as denoted by the green rectangle on the wire). The code inside the inline VI would be as follows, and the front panel would be "Data Force (1)" as shown above.
Of course, if you could add a force to a wire during runtime like probes, props NI. But I would be PERFECTLY happy if you could only add these force controls in edit mode prior to running.
One level further (and this would be AMAZING, NI, AMAZING): enable and disable certain parts of the cluster that you would like to force and allow the other elements to be controlled by the VI logic. I made the example above because it would be very natural to ONLY force Sensor1 and Sensor2, and letting the output run it's course from your forced input.
<< This is what I look for
