Showing animations till vi initializes

[Aojha]

Hi, I have an application in which when I press run button of labview vi (or double click .exe file). It initializes various parameters. I do not want to display labview front panel during that time, instead I want to display some animations (like loading program) or picture with changing display messages. How can I do this in Labview??

[Eden_S]

Hi Aojha,

You could just modify the Front Panel to appear as you want it, pictures and text can easily be placed on the Front Panel and it has a fair amount of flexibility in terms of appearance. To change things like the menu visibility, click "File -> VI Properties" within the VI and select the category "Window Appearance".

Thank you,

[Aojha]

HI Eden,

Actually I have customized windows appearnce but I could not get desired appearance.

What I want is I do not want to show Front panel untill everything has been initialized. I want to show some custom animations like some progress bar showing % of laoding along with message about components that have been initalize are being initialized. If you could show me some simple way of doing it, it will be really helpful.

[subbzz]

Hi,

Even you can try out this with Tab control. Consider your image  in one page and your actual controls in the other. Once your are done till the initialisations show the picture tab, then the one with actual controls.

[Aojha]

hi subbzz,

Can I remove picture tab or somehow disable it after the program loads, so the user can not go to the picture tab.

[subbzz]

Hi,

Yes. As your are changing the tab order in your code only, user cannot come back to the previous tab in which you display your animations. I have attached a vi in my previous comment only that might serve your requirement.

[Aojha]

The file was of latest version but I got your point.

I will try to implement it.

I have one more question to ask when I am using tab control. It will still show windows appearances settings that I have set. Suppose I do not want to display any of windows menubar functions only picture or animation during initialization and then change vi's appearance to standard window appearance after initialization. Can I do so?

[subbzz]

Hi,

Yes. First set your vi property to dialog mode in vi properties.

1.  Turn off the title bar using the property node.

2.  Once after the initialisations, make the required properties visible using the property nodes.

See the attached vi converted to LV 8.0

[BillMe]

Here's another method that uses a separate subVI as your progress indicator so you don't have to put controls on your front panel that you don't want.

To polish it, you should probably put the initialization of the progress indicator (nodes) into a subVI.

[Aojha]

HI BillMe your version 2012 is higher than mine 2010. Could you reconvert and attach it again.

I think you are probably closing front panel of main vi through invoke node and displaying a subvi with deifferent windows appearance. and after initialization displaying main vi front panel