maintaining the appearance of a diagram type def constant

[LV_Pro]

I remember a discussion of the issue I'm having. I'm developing in LabVIEW 8.6.1 and in trying to reuse one of my associates code I've run in to an annoying issue. He has a fairly large diagram constant, which consists of an array of a type def'd cluster. He has laid it out on the diagram in a nicely readable manner, with one element of the cluster consisting of an array of I32, which in the diagram constant, and in the strictly type def, he has expanded to show the first 6 elements. The problem is that if I make a change to any element of the cluster, in this case I wanted, for compulsive reasons to change the mentioned I32 to U8 (the are converted to those in the last step of it's use), the aesthetially (and time consumptive to create) constant completely changes its appearance, the array shrinking back to one element showing, horizontally place cluster elements going to vertical, etc. I don't remember from the earlier threads, and wasn't able to find the correct search parameters to find it, whether there was a resolution.

Thanks!

[Ben]

I suggested using wrappers for the type def constants in my Nugget on Type Definitions found here.

That will fixe the diagram explosion but does not directly address the issue when the old cluster is removed and the new version put in its place.

To the best of my knowlege this is not logged as a bug.

So I can't point you at a solution.

Take care,

Ben

[LV_Pro]

Thanks Ben, have been "encapsulating" many of my diagram "constants" this one in particular, it was pretty big on the diagram. It is just that it was/is nicely laid out, making it easy to edit some of the values as we might need, and it becomes more than a bit of pain when it changes. My recollection is that it is the way it is, but I hopeing that there might be a "nugget" out there that I missed. Another annoyance in this location's installations is that when I copy some bit of code from one location and the do a paste, rather than pasting it in the general area of where I've clicked on the diagram it drops it in the middle, which if I don't carefully move it before accidentally click elsewhere usually drops it in the middle of other code.  Moving around from one version to another really messes with my head!

[Ben]

Editing type def constant value on the BD is dangerous since an edit to the type def blows away the edits. That is why I recomended do explicit bundles of non-type def dat into the cluster inside the wrapper.

Ben