template vi's in labview projects

[angelo]

Hi,

I'm creating a lv project where I have some template vi's (*.vit files). The lvproj is intended to be a common starting point for more specific projects.The idea is that the developer would start with instances of a template vi's and then populate them with sub vi's as needed and then perform a source distribution.

The problem is that when I double click the vit files, from within the project, they open as vit's rather than as numbered vi's. This is different behavior than opening them from a windows directory.

Of course it is no big deal to "save as" and change to "vi" file extension, but this project is intended to be used for domain experts who are labview novices. I want to make as seamless an experience as possible and navigating a "save as" dialog along with with renaming the file extension is a friction point that I would have liked to avoid.

So, here's my questions:

Is there some logic behind why it is NOT this way?

Is there an obscure setting that I can change to make vit's open as vi's in a project?

Is this use-case of vit's in a project a sound idea architecturally?

Thanks!

[TCPlomp · Accepted solution]

I think you can right-click the VI in the project and select 'Create new VI from template'.

Another idea is to store the VIs in the LabVIEW template folder.

Or store them in palette as merge VIs.

Ton

[angelo]

Yep. I should REMEMBER to actually READ the menu when I right-click!