Project Explorer: organizing Items versus Files

[cebailey]

>The files view is helpful if you want to move files to a new physical location on disk.  [...] if you do it in the files view, all the links are updated.

This seems like reason enough to have a Files view even if you don't use it for anything else.

You *could* use different organization strategies in Items versus Files. For example, you could organize things in the Items view according to the goal they help reach (UserInterface, FileAccess, Calibration, ErrorHandling) and organize them in the Files view by their entity type (Vi, Typedef, Graphic, Text). Does anybody do this kind of thing? Why?

[Ben]

---

cebailey wrote:

...

You *could* use different organization strategies in Items versus Files. For example, you could organize things in the Items view according to the goal they help reach (UserInterface, FileAccess, Calibration, ErrorHandling) and organize them in the Files view by their entity type (Vi, Typedef, Graphic, Text). Does anybody do this kind of thing? Why?

---

Yes, see my post # 17 above.

Ben

[TCPlomp]

Two very powerfull thing about the Project Explorer aren't noticed:

• Conditional symbols
  They are set on the 'target' (my computer) level and can be used to have such features as 'debug', 'client' or '.....', so you have a constant that is used everywhere on that target, in the code you use the 'conditional structure
• Source Code integration
  What I really like about this feature is that if I change a VI (I mostly get the vi's writable) I get a question 'Do you want to checkout'. I love it! (using the project with subversion is a little bit trickier).

Ton

[Will_S.]

These also may be of additional help:

Managing Applications with the LabVIEW Project Explorer- Chapter 1

http://zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-727

Managing Applications with the LabVIEW Project Explorer- Chapter 2: The Project Explorer

http://zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-728

[cebailey]

>Post #17

So the Files view is organized by methods in classes and the Items view is organized by inheritance - that's it. I missed that before. You would get a sense of how the things would work just by seeing where they appear in the Items page.

[Ben]

---

cebailey wrote:

>Post #17

So the Files view is organized by methods in classes and the Items view is organized by inheritance - that's it. I missed that before. You would get a sense of how the things would work just by seeing where they appear in the Items page.

---

Exactly!

 See here

Ben

Message Edited by Ben on 01-15-2009 03:04 PM

[cebailey]

So, Ton, the conditional symbol thing would let you automate multiple versions of the whole project for, maybe, different computers? You could have Mac and PC targets in the project and just one set of vis, for example? Or maybe you could handle language and number formatting localization this way, so it centralizes the choice in just one spot and during a build its consequences automatically propagate everyplace you want?

I don't think I quite got that right. It doesn't look like you can have a vi that is located above the My Computer level in Items, so it's not like you could have vis that were common to different targets, can you?

[TCPlomp]

Different OS's are allready dealt with in the conditional disable structure.

However this feature would let you easily create an executable with 'Demo' state, and by changing the value in the project you can create a 'Full blown' executable.

No code needed.

Ton

[cebailey]

Ben, Wow! As a first impression, it's like you can think in terms of verbs if you look at the Items page, and think in terms of nouns if you look at the Files page! Or maybe better to say that the Items view puts your attention onto programming and the Files view puts your attention onto the "things" your user is interacting with. Your user might guess there is a list like your Files view somewhere. But there is a feel that the application has, whether it is intuitive or not and so forth, and that feel originates in kinds of things you hope your user never becomes conscious of. You want the application to work intuitively without the user even having to figure out exactly what IS intuitive about it. And the things that create that feel are emphasisized on the Items page, which though perhaps never guessed at by the user, are much in your attention.

[cebailey]

Ton, that is nice. You could create purely-SI versus purely-English unit versions throughout a project this way. Or have development system versus target system, where there could be any kind of difference between the two (like development system using VISA where target system uses NiDAQmx). That seems very powerful.