Hiding front panel with built applications

[AndyBrown]

I've seen and used the techniques to run a VI with a hidden front panel. I have the VI open a reference to itself and it works as expected. However when I build my code into an application, it no longer works. Watching Task Manager I see the application quit when the panel becomes hidden. I've even tried building the window-less.zip example I downloaded from the NI website. It worked in VI form but not in EXE form. Anyone have any suggestions?

[Darren]

Andy,

I ran into this problem back in LabVIEW 5.1 when I was developing a game in LabVIEW. I had an introductory screen that allowed the user to run the tutorial or play the game, and upon selection I hid the introductory screen and displayed the panel of the appropriate subVI (tutorial or game). Unfortunately when I built an executable, it would end once I chose to run a subVI, and I later found out that this is because closing the front panel of an executable essentially closes its reference. My workaround was to use LabVIEW 6i and the new tab control to keep all of my front panel operations in the same VI, and programmatically switch between the tabs in order to display different screens (like tutorial, enter info screens, the actual game, etc.)

I hope this
suggestion helps. There may be a way to bypass the problem with closing EXEs once their front panels are gone, but I do not know of one.

Good luck with your application, and have a pleasant day.

Sincerely,
Darren Nattinger
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[AndyBrown]

Darren,

Thanks for the input. The only probelm is that each screen is a different size. I know it is possible to resize the window but this can become a headache. The work-around I have put into place is to pass a reference to the main program into each each sub VI. It then becomes the responsibilty of the subVI to close the main program's front panel(after opening its own) and also to reopen the main program's front panel (before closing its own).

Andy