In VI hiarchy what does the blue up arrow mean?

[clark]

While examining the VI hiarchy of a rather complicated VI I note that some sub VI icons have little blue up arrows to the right and up. What do they mean?

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> While examining the VI hiarchy of a rather complicated VI I note that
> some sub VI icons have little blue up arrows to the right and up. What
> do they mean?

The arrow indicates that there are other callers not currently visible.
You can show all of the VIs in the View menu, or better yet, popup
on a subVI and choose Show Callers. There are quite a few features
for closing, opening, and moving around the items in the hierarchy
menu.

Greg McKaskle

[Labviewguru]

Greg, Please post your source for this info. Not even NI Developers could tell me what everything meant (read arrows, highlighting, etc...)

THANKS!

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> Greg, Please post your source for this info. Not even NI Developers
> could tell me what everything meant (read arrows, highlighting,
> etc...)
>

Hmm. I guess some of us developers know more than others. I did a
quick search on the manual of LV6, and I didn't find all of the info
there, so I'll jot some more down.

The down pointing arrows are shortcuts for opening and closing the
connections to callees. I point out that they are a shortcut because
you should probably use the popup menu to reach most of the operations
of the hierarchy window. Most of these are pretty easy to understand,
Show All Callers, Show All SubVIs, Hide All SubVIs. Highlight
Connections displays the signals one level above and one level below in
red. All other connections go black. After each arrow click or each
popup to show or hide, the new connections are similarly shown in red.
This is done to help see what is new and what was already there.

Another popup is the Show VI Hierarchy. This will show all the VIs
below, and the callers above that are in the path to any top-level VI.

These are popups on a particular VI, and each of the Show/Hide options
will be applied to the VI being popped up on. You can also popup in
open space to gain access to some common menu items. These are the same
as are in the View menu.

There are three tools in the hierarchy menu. If you tab through the
tools, you have access to the pan tool. This is the hand, a shortcut
for scrollbars. The operate tool allows clicking on the arrows, but
does little else. Then there is the selection tool. This is good for
dragging and dropping VIs from the hierarchy window into another
diagram. It can also be used to simply rearrange a row of icons in case
you don't like the layout you have.

The up pointing blue arrows are an indication that there are additional
callers not currently shown, and the down pointing arrows are black when
fully expanded, red when additional callees are not shown.

Pointing to an icon will show either the name or the path in a tip
strip. Perhaps the best feature is the type ahead. With the hierarchy
window frontmost, type a few characters of a VI name. The tip strip
will move about showing where the VI is in the hierarchy as the name is typed.

Greg McKaskle

[adamsjr]

Greg,

Thanks for the info. I had also wondering about those arrows.

Along that same line, is there any way to get a text printout of the info
contained on the Heirarchy window? I would particularly like to be able to
get a full path listing as I have had some situations in the past where the
pedigree of a subvi (ie. it's location) was NOT what I had thought it was.
Such a listing would have helped.

Thanks,

Jim


Greg McKaskle wrote in message
news:3B661F33.343C412E@austin.rr.com...
> > Greg, Please post your source for this info. Not even NI Developers
> > could tell me what everything meant (read arrows, highlighting,
> > etc...)
> >
>
> Hmm. I guess some of us developers know more than others. I did a
> quick search on the manual of LV6, and I didn't find all of the info
> there, so I'll jot some more down.
>
> The down pointing arrows are shortcuts for opening and closing the
> connections to callees. I point out that they are a shortcut because
> you should probably use the popup menu to reach most of the operations
> of the hierarchy window. Most of these are pretty easy to understand,
> Show All Callers, Show All SubVIs, Hide All SubVIs. Highlight
> Connections displays the signals one level above and one level below in
> red. All other connections go black. After each arrow click or each
> popup to show or hide, the new connections are similarly shown in red.
> This is done to help see what is new and what was already there.
>
> Another popup is the Show VI Hierarchy. This will show all the VIs
> below, and the callers above that are in the path to any top-level VI.
>
> These are popups on a particular VI, and each of the Show/Hide options
> will be applied to the VI being popped up on. You can also popup in
> open space to gain access to some common menu items. These are the same
> as are in the View menu.
>
> There are three tools in the hierarchy menu. If you tab through the
> tools, you have access to the pan tool. This is the hand, a shortcut
> for scrollbars. The operate tool allows clicking on the arrows, but
> does little else. Then there is the selection tool. This is good for
> dragging and dropping VIs from the hierarchy window into another
> diagram. It can also be used to simply rearrange a row of icons in case
> you don't like the layout you have.
>
> The up pointing blue arrows are an indication that there are additional
> callers not currently shown, and the down pointing arrows are black when
> fully expanded, red when additional callees are not shown.
>
> Pointing to an icon will show either the name or the path in a tip
> strip. Perhaps the best feature is the type ahead. With the hierarchy
> window frontmost, type a few characters of a VI name. The tip strip
> will move about showing where the VI is in the hierarchy as the name is
typed.
>
> Greg McKaskle

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> Along that same line, is there any way to get a text printout of the info
> contained on the Heirarchy window? I would particularly like to be able to
> get a full path listing as I have had some situations in the past where the
> pedigree of a subvi (ie. it's location) was NOT what I had thought it was.
> Such a listing would have helped.
>

I don't think any such tools is built in, and it definitely isn't a part of
the hierarchy window. Since a VI reference's property node returns callers
and callees, it wouldn't be hard to write one. You might try searching
the different archive sites at NI and pica.army.mil.

Greg McKaskle

[Dave Karon]

It seems to me that the basis for that must exist in the code for the hierarchy window.
The the View/"Full VI Path in Label" checked, when you place the cursor over a
VI's icon in the Heirarchy window, a label with the full path is shown.
I've used that to find a problem where I was calling an obsolete version of a VI,
a while ago. A bit cumbersome, though. It would definately be good to be able to
print that.

Dave Karon
Concepts NREC

"Greg McKaskle" wrote in message news:3B676D98.3BC3363A@austin.rr.com...
> > Along that same line, is there any way to get a text printout of the info
> > contained on the Heirarchy window? I would particularly like to be able to
> > get a full pat
h listing as I have had some situations in the past where the
> > pedigree of a subvi (ie. it's location) was NOT what I had thought it was.
> > Such a listing would have helped.
> >
>
> I don't think any such tools is built in, and it definitely isn't a part of
> the hierarchy window. Since a VI reference's property node returns callers
> and callees, it wouldn't be hard to write one. You might try searching
> the different archive sites at NI and pica.army.mil.
>
> Greg McKaskle

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> It seems to me that the basis for that must exist in the code for the hierarchy window.
> The the View/"Full VI Path in Label" checked, when you place the cursor over a
> VI's icon in the Heirarchy window, a label with the full path is shown.
> I've used that to find a problem where I was calling an obsolete version of a VI,
> a while ago. A bit cumbersome, though. It would definately be good to be able to
> print that.
>

The information doesn't exist in the hierarchy window, but in the VIs themselves.
The hierarchy digs the info out and draws a picture. Other tools that
build a
table instead can be written similarly. The reason I describe how to build
it is that then you do not need to wait until it is bu
ilt in.

Greg McKaskle