Visibiliy of VI during runtime

[mrbean]

I have a VI that allows the user to configure where the application will store certain system information (calibration file location, station ID, etc).  The user can access this dialog in one of two ways: (1) Directly from one of the menu selections, (2) At powerup, if any of the fields in the dialog are blank, the operator is forced to enter something into those fields.

For situation 2, I'll open the StationGlobals.ini and populate the dialog fields with certain values from there (once I figure out how to add info to the StationGlobals.ini) if they exist.  If I determine that any field is empty, I want to display the VI and require the user to enter the proper information.

If all fields contain valid information, I don't want to display the VI at all.  So, my questions are

1) How do I work with the VI and its fields and make the entire thing visible when I determine it necessary

2) Since the VI can be accessed in either of two ways, how can I tell who the parent caller was

[Dennis_Knutson]

As I see your problem, you would have a VI that includes a pop-up subVI. You can check the shipping examples. There's Dialog Box Demo, Login Dialog, and Logger with Event PopUp. You go to VI Properties>Window Appearance Customize. The subject has come up numerous times in the forum from new users and a quick search will find a lot of other examples.

Since it sounds like you will be calling this VI from two different places in you OI program, provide a Boolean input called "Show". In your VI, call the popup if either an entry is empty or if "Show" is true.

I already answered your question about how to read station globals in your post in the TestStand forum.

[mrbean]

I can't seem to find those examples anywhere.  If you could please direct me to them.  Is that where your suggestion of a popup sub-vi is shown?  Also, I there a way, as is done with individual components, where you can create a property node and set it's visibility? 

[Dennis_Knutson]

I suppose it's possible that the example names have changed with LabVIEW 8 but you should still be able to find something. In the example finder, do you have a topic called Building User Interfaces>Designing Dialog Boxes? Did you do a search for pop-up or dialog?

I don't understand what exactly you mean by "create a property node and set it's visiblilty". Property nodes are on the diagram and there is no way to hide objects on the diagram nor do I see why you would want to make the diagram visible. From what I understood you need to do, you want a VI's front panel visible and you can do that as I said from the VI Properties menu. Right click on the VI's icon or select it from the File menu. You can also set it with the VI Property Execution:Show Front Panel On Call.