Replace the line in a dial control with a different picture?

[coryvan]

I want to use the dial control to represent a turn signal lever in a car. It works great if set up correctly by allowing the control to take on only 1 of 3 possible values. To make my simulator more realistic, I would like to replace the line in the dial control with an image of my lever. When I try to do this, the results are not as expected. The new picture fails to rotate around its end point like the line does. Is there anyway I can make this work? Is there some paint program or picture format that will allow me to modify/replace the line with a similarly formatted picture that will work correctly with the dial control. Thanks for your help.

[Jim_Kring]

This doesn't solve you problem, but here is some interesting information. The rotatable front panel decorations, such as the lines and lines with arrows, can replace any of the dials and will rotate as expected!

-Jim

[rtamblin]

Unfortunately, there is not an easy or straightforward way of doing this. Graphics manipulation is not one of LabVIEW's strong points, so just replacing the needle with the picture of the turn signal lever will not allow for the lever to rotate around the center of the knob. One way you could possibly get the picture to rotate would be to use a picture control in conjunction with a dial control. You could make the picture control invisible, and have the picture move according to the dial value. I would recommend looking at the Robotic Arm example that ships with LabVIEW for some guidance on using the picture control.

Ryan Tamblin
Applications Engineer
National Instruments