Rename References of front panel elements. Is there a bug?

[MECSO]

Hi,

today I met that I'm able to rename the references of controls and indicators while the name of the element itself would not change. This does not make sense in my opinion as the visible relationship between the element and the reference gets lost completely. On the other hand, when I change the name of the element in the block diagram, the name of the reference will change, but only as long as the name of the reference and the element are the same. So I like to aks if this has any useful aspect or if it is a bug?

Original:

Name of the element changed:

Name of reference changed:

Name of control changed after the name of reference and element are not equal:

The internal connection of the elements still remains, but is is a mess for debugging for sure.

Regards, Patrick

[GerdW]

Hi MECSO,

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@MECSO wrote:

today I met that I'm able to rename the references of controls and indicators while the name of the element itself would not change. This does not make sense in my opinion as the visible relationship between the element and the reference gets lost completely. 

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This is not a "new feature", this behaviour is shown in LabVIEW since ages.

(In older LabVIEW versions I experienced crashes, when I accidentally renamed a reference/property node…)

You should take this conclusion: NEVER rename references/property nodes…

[raphschru]

Hi, you can kudo this idea to make that change:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Disallow-changing-the-label-of-control-references-and...

[Yamaeda]

That's an old and known behaviour. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but if they don't match and you upgrade LV version it can relink and that's definately a bug ... If i'd theorize i'd say "Let users rename refs if they e.g. want to call them 'Test 1 ref' on the block diagram for readability."

[altenbach]

Personally, I would prefer if references would look more like local/global variables, just with a different glyph (and maybe different text background color). Now the name is naturally locked as it should be.

quick and ugly draft

Nobody really understands the deep meaning of the current "digital" text as used for any numeric scalar reference. Aren't computer all digital? Similarly, we get "string" for strings and "path" for paths. but we can glean that same fact from the color alone!

For arrays, we get "array", independent of the element type (duh!). Here the name of the control would be much more informative!

(Yes labels should be short and concise. We can use the legend for more descriptive text on the front panel if needed)

(Note that local variables can show a label, but it is locked to the name of the VI and while we can (seemingly) change it in the properties dialog (LV2020 as tested), it reverts to the VI name instantly. Sisyphean!)