Partial Cure for Icon Editor Template Problem

[Bob_Schor]

I'm being driven crazy by the behavior of Icon Editor Templates (which I love and use all the time).  What happens is I'll open a Project, start making Icons with my set of Templates (all stored in LabVIEW Data\Icon Templates\VI\BS Icons) and, particularly if I've included copies of VIs that were developed, say, two years ago and copied from some other file on disk, will notice two copies of the Template, with the second copy often in ...\VI\3rd Party.  Now, these are clearly my templates, just saved in the "wrong" place.

Getting rid of these duplicate Templates has been very difficult -- I just spend a half hour trying to do so.  You delete all of the files from 3rd Party, open Icon Editor and see only a single copy, then start doing stuff and Bingo!, the Template pops up in both the Template listing in Icon Editor, but also the file reappears in the 3rd Party folder.  What to do?

So I did a Web search, found some idiot named "Bob Schor" who asked about this in 2011 (on this Forum, of all places!), got some suggestions, but didn't fix the problem.  So I tried Something Else.

I noticed that there are a bunch of .BIN files stored in the Icon Templates folders, all with file names that appear to reference the various versions of LabVIEW (e.g. Templates.15.0f2.bin).  On a lark, I deleted this file, deleted the 3rd Party Template folder, reopened LabVIEW, reopened the Icon Editor, and (he said, hopefully,) the problem seems to be solved.  There is no more 3rd Party Folder showing up in the Template listing, the Icons That Aren't Really There aren't showing up, so maybe I've Slain the Evil Dragon.  I'll let this sit for a week, and if it still seems to be working, will come back and mark this as a "Solution".  Comments and Further Ideas Welcome.

Bob Schor

[RavensFan]

Yes, please update us.

I've always found that a little odd and annoying, but never put time into trying to figure it out.  I didn't have that may templates where having them all duplicated wasn't a big issue.

[mcduff]

Never used templates, but the bin files are safe to delete. I often drop a stash of icons from fatcow in the glyph folder, http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons I then delete the bin file, while LabVIEW is closed. This causes LabVIEW to re-index all of the icons in the LabVIEW Data folder allowing one to have a bunch of icons that are searchable. Good luck. Cheers, mcduff

[Bob_Schor · Accepted solution]

There was a step that I missed, but just found.  Within the Icon Editor itself, there is a setting for where (by default) to save templates that it finds inside a VI already, but are not found within the Icon Template folder.  This setting is under Tools, Icon Editor Properties.  Under the Category "Template", you need to turn off "Save third-party icon templates" which as a default value of <LabVIEW Data>\Icon Templates\3rd Party.

I'm currently testing (on multiple machines, all configured slightly differently) these ideas, and so far, it seems to be working.  I had a small panic today when the "3rd Party Folder" with additional copies of some of my templates started appearing as I opened existing VIs, but turning off the "Save third-party icon templates" switch seemed to fix this.  I'm almost ready to mark this (and the earlier) post as a Solution ...

Bob Schor