how to make an animated graphical front panel?

[perfb@yahoo.com]

I am looking for examples of a front panel design where image blocks
are dynamically changing during execution to represent the
instrument/machine/robot pictorially etc.

I looked at the 'robot.vi' example from LV7.1 but it looks insanely
complicated just to draw a simple jointed arm.

I would just like to fetch multiple prestored jpg image snippets and
move them around the screen under program control, as a simpler
alternative to depicting the hardware's motion.

I looked at the 'picture control' examples but none showed this kind of
use of multiple images in motion in a single picture control.

Are there any such examples out there? Or is there a better way to do
it?

tia!

[EdDickens]

If you already have the needed images, you just need a way to load and move them around a Picture Control.

The attached VI shows a simple implementation of this. Unzip the attached VI and images to a single directory and run it. It just loads the included ten images in sequence and moves it slightly each time by specifing a new upper-left coordinate in the image control.

Multiple images can be loaded into a single image control by using multiple "Draw Flattened Pixmap.VI" VIs and wiring the image output of one to the image input of another. The images will be drawn on top of each other, so you'll need to specify the coordinate correctly to line everything up.

Hope this helps.

Ed

[Ben]

Thank you for the new example Ed!

I have added this thred to the Pciture control example thread that can be found here.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=BreakPoint&message.id=1262&jump=true

See reply #4 of that thread for another example of moving objects around in a picture control.

Ben

[sarahk]

Hi, perfb.

I found another example program that might help you out. It doesn't do precisely what you described, but I think some programmatic changes to the ring control could give you the dynamic behavior you're looking for.

Good luck!

Message Edited by sarahk on 04-11-2006 01:33 PM