What does a VI do when it "receives a control"? If you mean receives data from a control then that control must be wired into the VI...and if you have wired the control then you migh as well have wired it's reference to it (right-click on the control and select create reference), but then you already have the refrence. If you mean identify the reference to the origin (control) of the data coming via e.g. a global then no, the data does not contain a reference.
You can however generate references to control without creating a reference...any VI can find the reference to any control using VI server functionality. Open a reference to the VI of which you need a control reference from, use a property node to read the front panel refrence of that VI, then wire that re
ference to another property node and select the controls property. Now you have an array containing the reference to all the controls in that VI...if the index of the reference you are looking for is fixed then just read that index of the array...however if you want to dynamically find the reference, wire the name of the control into the VI that is to find the refrence, then use the control reference array to read out the names of the controls (wire the references one by one to a name property)...searching through it until you find the reference for the control with the given name...
Is that what you are looking for?
See attached example.
