Tab Control and Front Panel Size

[RMy]

I created a front panel with "hierarchic" tab controls: On each sheet of the "main" tab control, a new tab control is placed. This works fine, and fits within my screen size. But my front panel seems to become much bigger though. If I print out the front panel, the printout is several pages, and the print I want is tiny and placed in the corner of the 1st page. Why is it so? What can I do?

[Shan]

I appear to have the same problem you're describing. The workspace is many times bigger than the space occupied by the controls. I have a tab control, without nested tab controls, that Labview believes is huge.

Try this out: Create a property node for the tab and select Bounds. Create an indicator and see what it reports as the bounds (width and height). I bet it'll be very big, bigger than your screen resolution. In my case, the bounds were reported as more than 8100 pixels wide and more than 1500 pixels high although the actual tab control was about 300 wide x 400 high.

I happened upon this possible solution completely by accident. Expand the property node and select Label.Visible. Set it to T or F - whichever is a change from the current
setting. Run your program and look at what the Bounds reports now. In my case - it fixed it.

See the attached.

Don't know what I did to make it go haywire or why the above should fix anything, but . . .

I'm curious to see if you get the same results.

~Tim

[RMy]

Thanks for your input, but that didnt help me much. Actually (!) it redused # of pages from 6 to 3! But thats still too much. And the picture on 1st page is of same size as before. The problem is not really the size of the tab control (I believe), but the huge area surrounding the control that LV for som reason believes is in use and prints out. But in this area its nothing!

[Shan]

I know it doesn't sound like it's associated to the tab control, but I bet it is (though its really just a hunch). Did you look at what LV reported for the BOUNDS of the tab control before running what I suggested? It's only a guess, but since you've got multiple tabs (nested), there could be others that are erroneously large.

Originally, I thought I had hidden a front panel control or indicator. Another user posted the following VI to show all controls. I modified it to look at the bounds all the controls which is where I found the source of the problem.

Try running this vi and see if you've got some other tabs (or other controls) that LV reports unusually large bounds.

Good luck, hope it helps. I feel your pain.

~Tim

[Lusky]

Hello,
I have almost the exact problem, and I did find a solution, but do not like it, and have no answer for why I have the problem.
I have a nested tab control as well, SOMETIMES I can run the VI and the parent tab control will be off the screen. Occasionally restarting the software will fix it, but usually not.
I put a bounds indicator on the child control and found that it was larger than the screen. If I move that tab control out, I can resize the parent. Leave it inside and you can forget it.
If I simply move the controls around inside the child tab control WHILE it is still outside, the bounds will drop to a normal size, and once this happens, I can put the child back inside the parent and all is well until next time.
I think it has something to do with
Labview incorrectly calculating the bounds of a control somewhere inside the child tab control.

I'm open to anyone with a reason I have the problem in the first place, or can offer a solution. I feel your pain as well.

[waldemar.hersacher]

RMy, shane and Lusky

in which LV version does this happen? I seldom use the tab control but I have an application which will be updated from LV 6.0.2 to LV 7. In LV 6.0.2 I have never seen this problem.

Waldemar

[RMy]

Waldemar: I use LV 6.1.

Lusky (and Shane): Thanks for input. I have not tried to solve the "problem" since I first posted the question. Will have another look at it now. Thanks.