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I use an electrical drawing package and on different pages of schematics it is nice to have copied components e.g. potential lines to be in the same position so when flicking through pages you can easily see the differences and it looks prettier.

In an event structure or case structure when I copy and paste an object from one case to another I would like to be able to also copy the position of the copied item. I like to be able to scroll through event structures and see any identical components in the same location.

I propose that the X and Y keys on the keyboard be used to trigger this auto alignment so that after pasting, pressing Y will move the copied item to the same Y position and then X to move to X position.

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Lock text in center

Ever right-click a VI, reference, property node etc and have the search window pop up showing it is in multiple places. Then you double-click one of them or press go to and the window closes, only for you to realize that you didn't click the instance you were looking for?! So, now you have to go through the whole process again. Not to mention you don't know which one you just clicked on so you don't know how to pick up where you left off. Disaster. Please, just have the window stay open and your recent selection stay highlighted after going to that instance!

Currently LabVIEW provides the ability to apply the library icon to all the member VIs through the "Apply Icon to VIs" button on the library's general settings property page. This action applies the icon to all the VIs in the library and sets them as modified, even if the VI had the same icon before. Consider the case where you move a VI from one library into another. In this case, you want to apply the library icon for the destination library to the VI. The "Apply Icon To VIs" would be overkill, especially if the library has a large number of member VIs. Rather than the "Apply Icon to VIs" on the library, it would be very useful to have a "Apply Library Icon to VI" action that you apply on the VI in question that would apply the owning library icon to the VIs icon. This action would only modify the one VI that needs to get the new icon.

Improve sound playback quality

Many of you know that the things called variables in LabVIEW are not variables at all. This regularly causes some confusion. Ben elegantly explains this here where he suggests that a local variable in LabVIEW is more like an I/O device.

I propose that they be called something like I/O device, I/O register or I/O buffer. Maybe "Control Buffer". The idea is not to call variables something in the list but to simply come up with a better name.

I understand that there is a lot already written about LabVIEW that refers to those things as variables and that much documentation would have to change. But I think that LabVIEW documentation should at least start to call "variables" something different.

At a minimum this should be clarified in the documentation on variables.

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Sometimes when passing multiple values into "format into string" to build a complicated string e.g. a chain of commands for a device, it is possible that the format specifiers may become hard to notice if they aren't all aligned in the same column. I would like to propse that when a string constant is wired to the string formatter terminal of "format into string", the format specifiers be emboldened.

For example:

SOURCE:TRIGGER %s
LINE:WITHOUT:SPEC on
ANOTHER:WITHOUT:SPEC off
SOURCE:ARB %s
SOURCE:ARB:srate %.2f
MORE:LINES 51
AND:ANOTHER:ONE %f

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Insider program?

Time Based Evaluation Software

For all NI software that has an evaluation license available I propose that instead of a number of days the evaluation would be good for a number of hours. Whenever the software detects user activity it will start to decrement the hours remaining. If no activity is detected after some number of minutes the timer will stop decrementing.

I installed the Test Stand evaluation and ran out of time even though I only got to play with it for maybe a few hours. I did get an extension from our sales representative. I am hoping I will get the time to thouroughly check out this software before trying to get funds from the boss.

This idea is not specific to LabVIEW but all NI software for which evaluation licenses are available. I am posting this here since the LabVIEW idea exchange is the most visible.

Single control items have "NewVal" and "OldVal" in the Data Node for Value Change events. This is applies for numeric, boolean, and strings. It would be nice if this feature were included for listbox and multicolumn listbox labels for the "Edit Cell" events.

Use case: I use a listbox to show the materials for which the user has defined experiment settings for. These settings are saved in an XML file with the material name as an attribute. In the event that the user wants to edit the name in the listbox, it would be nice if they could just do that directly in the list box and the XML change will be handled automatically in the background. Currently to find the right element in the XML, I use an XPath to search for the label selected from the listbox. If the user edits the name, I need to know the old value in order to replace the existing name. Presently, this does not work as the Event Data Node only supplies me with the new value.

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From the 2014 upgrade notes:

Reviewing and Updating Type Definition Instances
In LabVIEW 2013 and earlier, when you apply changes from a type definition to instances of that type
definition, LabVIEW may lose or incorrectly preserve the default values for the instances you want to
update.
In most cases, LabVIEW 2014 automatically preserves the default values of each instance you update
from a type definition. When an instance cannot be automatically updated, LabVIEW places the instance
in an unresolved

If the typedef instance is unresolved I think it would be better for the 'Review and Update from Type Def' dialog to instantly appear once the edited typedef is saved.

The typedef currently visible on the block diagram that I right clicked to edit the typedef isn't necessarily the typedef with a problem. It could be hiding anywhere on the block diagram!

I could click the broken arrow, but I would always want to sort out this problem before proceeding so this idea would make life easier...

This could be a click box in the options?

Any thoughts?

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With the release of labview 2016 the issue of cross-platform support for video becomes critical.

As stated in the "features and changes" page: "NI no longer provides the 32-bit version of LabVIEW for OS X."

Up to now it was possible to use Christophe Salzmann's QTLib to work with video. This was great software because the very same "universal" VIs ran on Windows and OSX systems. However, this tool relied on QuickTime. QuickTime is 32-bit and will not evolve to 64-bit (it has been replaced by newer libraries), and so does QTLib.

Thus all the code developed with labview including cross-platform video handling cannot be maintained and developed!

On the other hand, video is becoming an ubiquitous feature in computer technologies, from mobile apps, to IT, to big data and deep learning. It is a strategic time to push for video on labview across all platforms. It is time for video handling VIs to appear in the standard dev package, just as jpeg or png read/write VIs were added after photos massively entered the computer world.

I propose the addition in the "Programming/Graphics&Sound" palette of a subset of VIs for handling video (open video file for read or write, read file frame by frame, append one frame to file, grab frames from webcam). There is no doubt that such feature will be valuable in a future labview release!

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If you create a strict type def of a numeric control and select radix visible and say change radix to Hex. When you drop the control on a front panel the radix is visible and the number is in Hexidecimal format. However if you drop this control onto a block diagram as a constant, the numeric constant defaults back to Decimal format and you must then right-click toi show Radix and change to Hexidecimal format.

If you strictly define the control to be in Hex format, the 'strict' type should be applied for the constant as well as for the controls and indicators. Cuurnetly it will default as Hex format for control and indicator, but not as a constant on the Block Diagram.

Using LabVIEW 2014

LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Telnet Support

X-Y Copy Alignment after Copy and Paste on Block Diagram

A "remove from group option" to remove single item(s) from front panel group

Lock text in center

Don't close search box after clicking on an instance!

Implement "Apply Library Icon to VI" when you want to apply the icon to a single VI in a Library

Improve sound playback quality

Change the name of local and global variables

Create shortcuts to folders when configuring an installer

Bold/higlight format specifiers in constants wired to "format into string"

Insider program?

Time Based Evaluation Software

Add "old/new" string to "Edit Cell" event data node

'Review and Update from Type Def' dialog box instantly appears

Video upgrade becomes critical for OSX/linux

Scrolling through Picture Rings using the Mouse Wheel

Can select Show/Hide Full Name at element in a bundle/unbundle function

Support Fixed-Point (FXP) Data Type in Unit Test Framework

Numeric strict type definition with radix visible, radix is not visible by default on Block Diagram for the type def constant

Actor Framework- Batch Message Accesor