Front Panel Visibility

[Tek]

I know it is possible to alter the visibility of certain objects using property nodes, but is it possible to completely alter the look of the front panel?  Say I want to display a message and a button on the front panel.  Then if a user presses the button, the front panel will display an entire experiment VI and not show the message or button anymore.  Is this possible, and if so, what is a good way to implement this?  Thanks!

-Tek

[tbob]

You can place all possible controls and indicators on the front panel, and use the visibility property node and/or use the position property node to show and place the controls where you want depending on the user button.  Or you can create a separate vi and customize the front panel to look like what you want, and when the user presses the button, it calls the separate vi.  You can also have a tab structure on the front panel.  One tab is set up to look one way, another tab is set up to look like the experiment.  The user can press which tab he wants to vue.

[mikeporter]

A very easy way of implementing this sort of functinality is to use subpanels--it also lend to a very nice type of modularzation of your application.

Mike...

[Tek]

I am new to LabVIEW, and I have never heard of subpanels. Where do I find them, and how do I use them? Thanks.
-Tek

[tst]

You can find the subpanel in the containers subpalette of the controls palette, but before you start using subpanels, which is a more advanced concept, you should consider using tbob's suggestion of making your experiment a seperate window, which will pop up. To do this, you need to write your experiment in a seperate VI (which you will need to do with a subpanel as well) and configure the VI window to open its FP when it's called (File>>VI Properties>>Window Appearance). This will mean that your VI can only run when its displayed.

You can also have it running all the time and open and close it's FP using VI server methods (search for that term), but you should probably start by searching this site and google for LabVIEW tutorials. Here and here are a couple you can start with. You can also contact your local NI office and join one of their courses.
In addition, I suggest you read the LabVIEW style guide and the LabVIEW user manual (Help>>Search the LabVIEW Bookshelf), which you can also search for things.