Decoration overlap

[Hootowl]

I have a screen that has multiple sets of gauge that are displayed one set at a time depending on external configuration files present on not.  Each gauge set has decorations as the background to the gauges which are not part of the gauges (done this way so that I can change the color of the decorations while running).  Thus, I need sets of decorations that I can hide or display selectively since the decoration sets overlap each other. I've tried using the decoration refnums to group them and control the visibility but the refnum assignment LabView gives the decoration as I place them on the screen seems to not follow the order in which the decorations are placed.  Is there any way to control or reassign the refnums for decorations such that I could have all the decorations for each gauge set sequential and thus, I could easily hide or display the decoration sets?  Alternatively, can multiple decorations be grouped together such that one refnum would reference all decorations in the group?

Thanks in advance for any help ,

Mel

PS:  I'm in the dark ages using LabView 7.0

[muks]

Can you post your vi/screen shot?

[tst · Accepted solution]

Today, the only way to access the decorations is by using the panel's Decorations[] property, which is sorted, if memory serves, by reverse placement order (or possibly by reverse Z-order). You could ID a specific decoration by using a tag which will serve as your label, but that's beyond the scope of this post (it's private and unsupported).

Here are some relevant suggestions:

1. Replace the decorations with color boxes. This will also allow you to control the colors more easily, but they don't have as many shapes as decorations (although you should be able to customize the color box and paste in the shape of any of the decorations).
2. Place the decorations in a tab control or a cluster (grouping them like you wanted). Now you can hide the tab control.
3. Instead of hiding the gauges, just use a set number of gauges and change their caption and the data going into them based on the user selection.

[Hootowl]

I used the cluster approach and it works well.  Thanks for the suggestion. 

Mel