06-11-2026 10:22 AM
Multiple support engineers have told me that LabVIEW reuses some internal references if you duplicate a frame in a case structure and that this causes the LabVIEW diff tool to confuse and highlight different frames of a case structure when comparing two versions of code.
The support engineers recommend to always create a new case rather than copying an existing case to prevent this issue. This seems to be a fundamental flaw with LabVIEW's "duplicate" mechanism - any copies etc of objects (case structure frame in this example)should be treated exactly the same as creating a new object
06-11-2026 10:48 AM
This sound like it should be in the idea exchange forums.
06-16-2026 10:26 AM
I've never heard of that, do you have any examples?
06-17-2026 07:00 AM
@NIExpert wrote:
Multiple support engineers have told me that LabVIEW reuses some internal references if you duplicate a frame in a case structure and that this causes the LabVIEW diff tool to confuse and highlight different frames of a case structure when comparing two versions of code.
The support engineers recommend to always create a new case rather than copying an existing case to prevent this issue. This seems to be a fundamental flaw with LabVIEW's "duplicate" mechanism - any copies etc of objects (case structure frame in this example)should be treated exactly the same as creating a new object
I think these support engineers need to deliver some more information.
I've been using LabVIEW for over 2 decades and I am not familiar with what they are saying.
What I DO know is that sometimes if you replace one dynamic event registration refnum with another one with different events, LabVIEW can make a bit of a mess of re-assigning the individual event cases to the eventy within the registration refnum. To get around this, we include a text in each case to highlight which event it's supposed to be handling just in case LabVIEW gets them mixed up.
06-17-2026 11:33 AM - edited 06-17-2026 11:39 AM
@NIExpert wrote:
Multiple support engineers have told me that LabVIEW reuses some internal references if you duplicate a frame in a case structure and that this causes the LabVIEW diff tool to confuse and highlight different frames of a case structure when comparing two versions of code.
The support engineers recommend to always create a new case rather than copying an existing case to prevent this issue. This seems to be a fundamental flaw with LabVIEW's "duplicate" mechanism - any copies etc of objects (case structure frame in this example)should be treated exactly the same as creating a new object
Can you explain why this is a problem? Is it the diff tool or the workbench? (Yeah, the "W" in LabVIEW is "Workbench")
Even if case duplication hinders YOUR workflow, in such a manner that a single tool's behavior is a showstopper, what is wrong with the workaround of creating new cases? How much code do you need to duplicate when creating a case? The best answer is "none." Do This or do That is the essence of cases within a structure. This and That should be distinct or outside of the case structure, right?
What specifically is your workflow? show example.