menu ring for tab control

[stoeckel]

Hi,

I use a tab control which got in the meanwhile more tabs than could still all be displayed simultaneously. That's why I would like to use a menu ring instead of the tabs in order to control which tab will be displayed in the forefront. However, I could not yet figure out how to change the "page label display" of the tab control into a menu ring. Have a look onto my simple example. I guess you agree that my current solution doesn't really look like a pull down menu although it works like one. Any hint how to improve the design?

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[Bush-Man]

Hi,

Is my Fixed VI helps you ?

I've just make the "Increment/Decrement" of the label, Visible and then customize it to change the location of the control.

Bush-Man

[mikeporter]

Another alternative that works well is to design the code such that instead of putting things into a tab control, each "pane" of functionality is actually a plugin subvi that gets called dynamically and displayed through a subpanel. Your top level application then simply becomes a very general application that can do pretty much anything because all the application-specific code is in the plugins. This architecture allows you to create new screens ad infinitum without having to rework your basic application code.

The only limitation is how big you're willing to let the ring control get.

I have built several applications on this basic structure and it works very well--and isn't even that hard to do...

Mike...

[stoeckel]

Mike,

thanks a lot for your comment. Do you have a small example vi which demonstrates your suggestion? It would be very helpful.

Peter

[stoeckel]

Hi Bush-Man,

no, that's not what I am looking for. I would like to replace the current control by a pull-down menu like raised ring control. The increment/decrement control is not very useful if the list behind the ring is already a bit longer.

Thanks anyway for your effort,

Peter

[tst]

Here's the thing - you can replace pieces of controls like that, but they have to be of the same type and representation or nothing happens when you replace them. Since the tab is an enum, replacing the enum display with a ring doesn't seem to help. What you can try is customizing an enum to look like a ring, saving it as a control and then customizing the tab and replacing the tab's enum with your saved enum.

Edit - I just tried it with a classic enum and it wasn't replaced. I'm guessing that even if it can work, you need to have the enum values saved into the control before replacing it.

Message Edited by tst on 07-26-2005 11:55 AM

[mikeporter]

Yes, but I'll have to wait till this evening to post it. In the meantime check the examples for subpanels. The thing to bear in mind when looking at the examples is that they all use the Run VI VI method to execute the plugins, but you can also use a Call be Reference node.

Mike...

[mikeporter]

Here's an example that is based on an example that ships with LV. I cleaned it up a bit so it would look mre like a "real" application. It's not great from the standpoint of code design (No error handling for instance) but it shows how these plugins could work.

Mike...

[stoeckel]

Mike,

thanks for your very instructive example. However, most of my controls, indicators, charts and so forth on the various tab pages are connected somehow with the rest of the main program. I cannot use independent sub-vis which will close whenever another page of the tab control is activated. If only I found a nicer solution for the pull-down menu to select the tab control pages, my current solution would fulfil its purpose.

Peter

[Henrik_Volkers]

Here is a programed way to do it, using event (LV7.1)