show hidden controls

[Shan]

I'm looking for a way to show all hidden front panel controls. I have hidden some controls, which now are apparently very far away (several screens) from my main work area. If I add a new indicator from the diagram, they are created very far away from the rest of my work. I've tried "showing" all the controls associated with terminals, but there still seems to be one or more out there.

[VIGuy]

I'll spare you my lecture on hiding controls and just give you an alternative:

- Make a tab control the size of front panel.
- Name it "Background".
- Make sure it has two tabs.
- Call one tab "UI" and the other "Hidden"
- Put all of your visable controls on the "UI" tab.
- Put all of your non-visable controls on the "Hidden" tab.
- Make the "UI" tab the "default value".
- Pop-up on the tab and uncheck "Tabs" in the "Visable" section.

Viola! Hidden controls that you can find any time.

To tackle your more immediate problem, try the attached VI.

Good luck.

[Shan]

While I usually much prefer lectures to solutions, this is a nice way of solving what I thought my problem was. Thank you.

Unfortunately, hidden controls do not appear to be the problem. I didn't find anything in the "outer reaches" of my front panel workspace.

All of my controls appear to be on the far left side of the workspace (as indicated by the horiz scroll bar). If I move all the controls right, it pushes the edge of the workspace away an equal amount. Any ideas why? I do not think there is an absolute zero reference - is there?

[Randy_H]

Shan,

LabVIEW remembers where the last control/indicator that was created from the block diagram was created and creates the next one below that one.

If you still have a large amount of scroll space, something is out there. It might be a free text label that has a space in it. You can use the VI Server to get all of the contorls/indocator references as well as all of the decorations. You can then see how many decorations you have and delete the ones you don't know anything about.

Randy Hoskin
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
http://www.ni.com/ask

[Shan]

OK - found the problem. The problem was NOT that there was a hidden control, decoration, or text. The problem was that Labview believed that a tab control on my front panel had bounds of over 8100 pixels wide and more than 1500 pixels high.

I expanded the VI server example from "VI Guy" to show me the position and bounds of all my controls. I had a control ref so to identify it I then made it's label visible. Turns out it was a tab control on my front panel.

To confirm this, wired the bounds and position to the control ref WITHIN THE SAME VI and everything magically corrected itself. The control reports the correct position and bounds and my workspace is no longer erroneously huge. Don't know why it occurred in the first place or wh
y querying it corrected the problem but . . .

Thanks to VI Guy who pointed me at the front panel properties.

[Shan]

Randy,

It appears that I'm not the only one experiencing the problem with a tab control appearing to be much larger (bounds) than it actually is.

Please see the following thread:
http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&RPAGEID=137&HOID=506500000005000000C5B00000&HIsQuestionPoster=No&HTHREAD=000045253&UCATEGORY_0=_49_%24_6_&UCATEGORY_S=0

or subject: "Tab Control and Front Panel Size"

Has this been reported by others as well? Is there a fix? I could send you a sample vi. It would be interesting to see if you find the same problem.

~Tim