Save front panels and print them at once

[Tim Bakker]

I have a VI that will be executed multiple times with different data, i want each of this front panels to be printed but it has to be one print instruction. I've tried to make an image of the front panel and append this to an Report, but the image is of a bad quality and the image which was made, contained only the view on screen!

[mikeporter]

If you want a report that is an image of the display screen one thing you can do is create a VI whose front panel is a clone of the application's front panel. The only code behind this front panels would be property nodes to set the clone's front panel to match changes the user makes in the display during execution (for example, a user can change the color of plots, or the such things). It is vital that the diagram of this VI has at least 1 property node, otherwise it will only update if its window is open.

Now as you main application is running it gathers a collection of all the data that you will want to print. When the user then clicks a print button, or the program exits (however you want the program to work) the code would take each dataset and one at a
time pass it to the clone VI and programatically print its front panel.

However, if all you have is tabular data (i.e. no plots or other graphics) I have found it easier to use the report generator VIs, but it's your call.

Mike...

[Tim Bakker]

Thank you for your answer, and indeed we have graphic plots. We will try this, and hopefully we will get it right. You talk about a property node, this has to be a property node off the application or something else? Can you tell me more about this?

Greetings Tim

[mikeporter]

A property node allows you to programatically change the appearance of front panel objects programatically. What I have done a lot in the past where I want a graph on a print out to exactly match one on the application's GUI, I will create a reference to the GUI's graph and pass it to the print-out (or as I described it earlier-clone) vi. Inside the print-out vi I can extract from the control reference the properties that are important--plot color, scaling, labels--what have you, and then use those values to set the properties of the graph on the print-out VI.

If you can wait a couple days I can send you some code to show you the process, but you will need to contact me directly as I have been having trouble lately posting code thats more th
an a couple hundred k in size.

In the mean time, checkout the LV examples that demonstrate property nodes.

Mike...

[Tim Bakker]

Thank you again, i would like some example code!