Darren's Weekly Nugget 07/03/2006

[johnsold]

Jeff,

I am trying Darren's suggestion, currently in my second day. No comment yet. I have been one of those who immediately disabled it upon upgrading.

On the Mac the "next most useful" tool is obtained by pressing "option (alt)," not "control."

Lynn

[JeffBoettcher]

Thanks for the correction, and sorry for any confusion.  I always get mixed up when switching between platforms and sometimes forget about this difference.  🙂

[MRedRaider]

I started out in 6i. No Auto tool. I can still remember the "thunk thunk thunk, click click, thunk thunk thunk" of selecting the correct tool, using it and then moving directly back to the previous tool. Tedious, but it worked at the time.
I switched to the auto-tool in 7.1. It does take some getting used to... but well worth it in the end.

Probably mentioned previously and I just missed it...

Problem: if you want to select an object with the auto tool, you pretty much have to move your mouse to the border of the object and left click. (Ex, click anywhere but the border of a button on the front panel and it simply performs the toggle)

TIP: Hold "Shift" then click anywhere on the object to select any item. This works on both the front panel and the block diagram.

[DanyAllard]

Hi, the autotool is great improvment in programming LabVIEW. I try to convince all my colege to use it, but it's hard to change some old practice.

I use it locked on. I don't see any limitaion of using it that way.

There's my tip to use it:

-To edit a Ring or Enum : If it is not selected hold Ctrl and you get the Text tool. If it is selected (With dash line) Double click the text zone.

-If you hold Shift and Ctrl at same time you get the Hand Tool to move the Front Panel or Block Diagram. Very useful 🙂

Have a nice "autotool" day 🙂

Dany

[crelf]

I've been programming with LabVIEW for a lot of years, and when the auto tool came out I thought "Great - NI R&D spent all that time on a marketing gimmick when they could have been doing other things" - I used to disable the auto tool immediately, until a colleague of mine suggested I give it a chance.  Sure enough, I tried it for a couple of weeks and still hated it.  It was only when he gave me a list of all the keyboard shortcuts did it actually start to make sense - now I can't live without it 🙂  My advice: the LabVIEW development environment has a bunch of really useful shortcuts (not just cut, copy and paste 🙂 ) - get out the quick start card that came with your LabVIEW box and learn them alonside getting used to the auto tool.  Sure, initially it will be slow, but once you get the hang of it, you'll never look back 😄

[johnsold]

I tried it for two weeks. I am turning it back off.

1. I am routinely working in LV 6, 7, and 8. It is much more convenient to have them all as similar as possible. The fact that LV8 no longer allows the use of the Command (or Apple) key as the modifier on the Mac is annoyng enough.
2. The auto tool requires too much precision. Only a couple of pixels at the boundary of an object change the tool. I prefer to have a larger target.
3. Very difficult to find the spot to connect to a straight wire segment for wiring. To get the wiring tool, you have to be just off the wire, not where you would typically click to connect to the wire.
4. Must use the arrow tools to choose a case from the selector label in a case structure. Without autotool the arrow cursor allows clicking anywhere in the label box to switch cases. I switch cases far more often than I change the label in a case. The autotool simply guesses wrongly here most of the time.
5. If you move a terminal, constant, or other node the autotool will not change to the wiring tool after the move although this is something I do very often: Move the object to the desired position, then wire it up. I can Tab or spacebar to the desired tool faster than clicking, finding it is still the selection tool, moving somewhere else, click again to deselect, move back and wait for the wiring tool, and then wire it.

Lynn

[agill]

I wonder if customization of the autotool is possible.  Although it would probably  be too complex for the average user to do.

[Darren]

Hi Lynn,

Thanks for giving the Auto Tool a try...that's all I asked.  It's clearly not for everyone.  As for the issues you mention, I never code on a Mac, so issue 1 doesn't affect me...if it's a non-documented loss of functionality, I would recommend you consider filing a bug report through the standard technical support channels.  I still maintain that the precision issues (2 & 3), although difficult at first, become non-issues over time simply because you get used to the Auto Tool regions...of course, I use 1024x768 resolution, so maybe it's easier for me to see the regions.  I don't encounter issue 4 because I always use Ctrl-Scroll Wheel to switch between cases in case structures...I never use the arrows.  As for issue 5, it's another one of those "getting used to" things...it's much faster for me to move -> click -> wire than to move -> tab -> wire, mainly because my left hand is doing other things on the keyboard since it's been freed of its subjugation by the Tab key.  🙂

-D

[crelf]

johnsold wrote:

1. I am routinely working in LV 6, 7, and 8. It is much more convenient to have them all as similar as possible.

Well that makes sense although I'd give it another try when you drop 6...

2. The auto tool requires too much precision. Only a couple of pixels at the boundary of an object change the tool. I prefer to have a larger target.

I don't agree.  Sure, when I started using it, I was finding it difficult, but with a little practice you soon know exactly where the targets are and it becomes as easy as pie...

3. Very difficult to find the spot to connect to a straight wire segment for wiring. To get the wiring tool, you have to be just off the wire, not where you would typically click to connect to the wire.

Again - practice makes perfect.  I think this behaviour is actually very intuative when you think about it - you have the mouse directly over the wire to move it, and off it just a little to wire it.

4. Must use the arrow tools to choose a case from the selector label in a case structure. Without autotool the arrow cursor allows clicking anywhere in the label box to switch cases. I switch cases far more often than I change the label in a case. The autotool simply guesses wrongly here most of the time.

The autotool doesn't guess at all - you're just expecting it to do what you expect when you put the mouse in the wrong area.  This, again, just comes down to practice.

5. If you move a terminal, constant, or other node the autotool will not change to the wiring tool after the move although this is something I do very often: Move the object to the desired position, then wire it up. I can Tab or spacebar to the desired tool faster than clicking, finding it is still the selection tool, moving somewhere else, click again to deselect, move back and wait for the wiring tool, and then wire it.

Starting to sound like a broken record: That's because you're used to doing it the old way - I used to agree with you, but now that I've been using the autotool for a while, it's much slower for me to use tab or the spacebar.

In summary, if you're proficient with an abacas, you might find it slower using a calculator for the first time   That said, since you're working in different versions of LabVIEW, then I'd stick to the old way if I were you.  You're certainly not a good test case for this experiment since you can't really switch completely over to the autotool - switching back every now and then (when you go between versions of LabVIEW) sort of defeats the purpose of trying to retrain your brain, so I'm not at all surprised that it didn't work out for you.  I suggest you try it again once you can actually stick to using the autotool only...

[Underflow]

Okay, I tried the autotool for a couple of weeks now, and I'll probably keep it on.

Some comments (based on win2kLV7.1, ignore if they've been addressed in OSotherLV8+):

-Having a "hotspot" for wiring on the bottoms and/or tops of cluster constants and local variables would be nice.  This is because locals with long names can't be reduced in size (that I'm aware of), and cluster constants are frequently used with functions with top/bottom wiring entries: bundle, unbundle, etc.  (Digression! Of course, reduced size cluster constants seem to have a way of returning to full size on their own... have you NI folks ever considered a tree control-like +/- button to collapse parts of the cluster?)

-Please don't shrug off resolution as a non-issue.  Large diagrams are still sometimes necessary (see the Managing Large Data Sets tutorial, or almost anything with lots of property nodes).  Also, as time progresses, higher resolutions are going to become standard (and my eyesight is going to get worse ).  If I were Darren, I would of course make the argument to my boss that I needed to investigate this issue in great depth with, say, three linked 23" Viewsonic 1920X1200 monitors

-the wiring tool doesn't seem to like corners of wires.  A little aggravating.

-(minor) it's no longer possible to select a connector pane position by clicking on the FP control and then the connector pane in the upper right hand corner.

-my left hand has a mind of it's own.  While negative feedback is, I suppose, a valid training tool, it would be nice if the system bell didn't ever ding when my left hand decides to use the tab key when the autotool is locked on.