Looking for a LabVIEW "Comparison Tool"

[jp2labview]

LabVIEW is hell to debug.

I'm working through Exercise 7-5 in the Intermediate I Course Manual. There is a Producer Loop, a Consumer Loop, and a Display Loop, each with a 8 to 12 element Case Structure.

Currently (11/14/2007), my project bombs consistently. Press Play, let it get half way through its cycle, press Stop, then the interface becomes unresponsive. I've tried enabling Highlight Execution, but there are many VIs that I don't understand (the manual has me drop them in) and so many things going on at once that I am lost.

I navigated to the Solutions folder, and opened the project. The solution (from what I can see) looks identical to mine, and it runs as it should.

I want to compare the two, so I tried to open another instance of LabVIEW so that I could look at each of the cases side-by-side. Naturally, LabSPEW (as we have come to call it) will not let you open 2 instances at one time.

Unlike normal languages (C++, VB, Perl), I can not print my code to see what went wrong (viewing on a screen is more difficult than looking at it on paper), and I can not use conventional comparison tools. It seems I am at the mercy of National Instruments to provide something.

I looked in the LV menus for a comparison tool. If it is there, it is either in an illogical spot or it is called something that I am not expecting.

I searched this forum for "comparison tool", but hundreds of irrelevant topics were all I could find.

Does anyone know how to compare one project to another using LabVIEW? Is this possible?

[Neil.Pate]

One quick comment, you certainly can print the code! File-->Print, and then customise the options to print what you desire, should do the trick. It does a pretty good job of it, and if you have a colour printer the output looks quite good.

[LabViewGuruWannabe]

Make a copy of the file and open them both together.

I don't know what your "Intermediate I Course Manual" is, so can you post your code? Are you saying that there are 3 separate Event Structures in your code? I know that having more than one Event Structure can cause unexpected things to happen.

An easy way to troubleshoot the code is to put temporary T/F LED Indicators or a Numeric Indicator that increments at various points in your loops and event structure, to help see where the code is stopping.

I'd be glad to help out, but I'd have to see the code.

B-)

[tst]

You can open two projects at the same time, but I'm guessing they have to have different names. I don't work with 8.x, so I don't have any experience with the project environment.

As for the comparison, if you have LabVIEW Pro, Tools>>Compare>>VIs should give you what you want.

[jp2labview]

To nrp: I printed the file to PDF (should be attached). (Maybe that will be good for "LabViewGu..." below.)

To LabViewGu...: New to LV (hence the Intermediate Course I'm taking). What do you mean by "post your code"? It's all in pictures! I guess I could say "Timing Module.vi Error In comes from here, Error Out goes to there," etc., but that would take forever!

To tst: I tried doing the compare, but when I went to Select... the file to compare it with, the C:\Solutions folder was not among the choices. I attempted to enter it manually, but LV said it was not a valid choice. My vi is listed in the "Compare VIs" dialog box as "TLC.lvproj\My Computer\TLC Main.vi" and it is physically located "C:\Exercises\LabVIEW Intermediate I\Course Project\TLC Main.vi".

Message Edited by jp2labview on 11-14-2007 10:44 AM

[Neil.Pate]

he means attach your VIs to a forum post (the attachment button is under the submit post blue button)

[jp2labview]

Gotcha. It is attached here.

The project has several additional VIs included, so I'm not sure if posting just the main VI will do any good.

[Neil.Pate]

I cant open the VIs as I dont have 8.5, but taking a very quick look at your pdf, one thing that may be hindering you is the timeout on your user event. If my memory serves me correctly if you do not wire a constant to it it defaults to -1 which means wait forever. Try setting it to 50 or something like that (a 50 ms timeout is fairly reasonable on user events).

Edit: sorry I have just noticed you are using programmatic user events, (I am not terribly familiar with these, is the zero in the create user event cluster for the timeout?). This is probably complicating things...


Message Edited by nrp on 11-14-2007 04:59 PM

[altenbach]

You have a breakpoint set!

Do a "edit...remove breakpoints from hierarchy". Rest looks OK, but of course I cannot test because of missing subVIs and typedefs.

(Btw, you don't need to place the queue in shift registers, it's not really using dataflow.)

Message Edited by altenbach on 11-14-2007 09:09 AM

[LabViewGuruWannabe]

I can't open it either, since I'm using 8.2. However, what does the "Stop" case in the consumer loop do? Doesn't the red dot indicate a breakpoint? Does the [0] connected to the Display VI Enable or Disable the display?




Message Edited by LabViewGuruWannabe on 11-14-2007 11:15 AM