LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

As suggested about two years ago (http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Is-it-possible-to-have-an-explicit-sign-in-numeric-controls/m-p/818370) I am still looking for a possibility to explicitly show the positive sign of a numeric value in numeric controls, i.e. the control should display '+6.789' instead of '6.789'.

Phrased differently I would like to have one more attribute 'SHOW_POSITIVE_SIGN' that could be set to

0: don't show the plus sign, i.e. display numbers as is implemented now, default

1: show plus sign for positive numbers

2: show plus sign for positive numbers and zero

It has been discussed a few times in the forum so it might be appropriate to also ask here for the implementation of a native polar plot, i.e. plot r versus theta, with radial grid lines and all the corresponding ingredients.

Right now it is possible to have plots resembling histograms by choosing as plot style VAL_VERTICAL_BAR.

However, at present the width of these bars can only be adjusted by changing the line thickness in pixels (ATTR_PLOT_THICKNESS)

From a users point of view it would be more useful having the possibility to specify the width in units of the x axis.

Explanation: Say one is plotting an xy graph, with the data equally spaced and in incremetns of 1. If the x scale is 0-100 there would be 100 thin lines which may be appropriate in most cases. If the x scale is 0-5 there would be only five thin vertical lines. This appearance is very much different from what one would expect from an histogram. The suggestion is to set the width of the histogram bars to say +/- 0.4 x units, then there would be nice bars ranging from 0.6-1.4, 1.6-2.4, etc. in the case of an axis scale of 0-5, and the width of the bars would shrink accordingly if the axis scale is 0-100; in this case, there would be 100 rather thin lines resembling more or less the current appearance.

So in effect this suggestion is about an automatically adjusting line width (right now it is not possible to implement it manually because the line width is specified in pixels rather axis untis and is also limited to a maximum of 32 pixel.)

One step further could be to draw rectangles instead of lines with the possibility to independently choose line color and fill color.

Using NetworkVariablePopup( ) I noticed that the localhost is listed twice (one as "localhost" and one with its name), and this generates some confusion.

Looking at the Distributed System Manager Window and DS_SelectURL( ) popup, for example, I understood the reason: in all these windows there are

• the local PC (localhost)
• all the network PCs (and of course, localhost is one of them)

The fact is that in DSM Windows they're grouped into "My Systems" and "Network Items" (see DSM2009.jpg) and in DS_SelectURL( ) popup they're grouped into "My Computer" and "My Network Places".

In NetworkVariablePopup( ) the PCs are not grouped (see NetVarPopup.jpg).

I suggest that also in the "Browse Network Variables" window the PCs should be grouped into "My Computer" and "My Network Places" or "My Systems" and "Network Items" (see suggested.jpg) because this little modification highly improves the usability.

Hi,

I have two minor suggestions that might be useful when designing a UI:

- the option to show a vertical and horizontal guide (as e.g. in Powerpoint...)

- a possibility to zoom in (and back out, of course )

Thanks!

When designing a tab page in the UI editor usually the total height and width needed to nicely place all the controls can be calculated using the heights of the individual controls plus some distance in between the controls.

One may end up with a number for the height of the panel (excluding the top positioned tab) of say 160 pixels. Unfortunately, in the UI editor it is not possible to set this value. All that is possible is setting the height of the complete panel tab including the tab height (to say 181). It would be nicer having the possibility to either set the height of the panel including the tab (and the usable panel height will adapt) or to set the height of the usable panel height and the total height of the panel tab will adapt accordingly. Then moving the tab from the top to the left the usable panel height would remain constant.

A workaround has been given by Roberto here so this suggestion is not the most urgent wish but still would increase user friendlyness of the UI editor... 

This is just a kind little reminder (see the discussion here) to make the undocumented plot type attribute ATTR_PLOT_TYPE public, including definitions of the various plot types such as VAL_PLOT_XY

While at present it's possible to obtain various attributes such as line thickness and color, the plot type as the most basic aspect officially is not supported...

I know we used to have this web server feature 6-7 years ago.

I would request a function where we can export designated panel which user can control from web. Also provides an option to have read only or read/write access. Also password options.

Something like this.

ExportPanelToWebServer (panelHandle, READ_ONLY_FLAG, PASSWORD_FLAG, PASSWORD);

//This starts web server automatically and ready for connection on port 80.

This opens door to lots of applications which requires web control. I think LabVIEW has similar feature. (Web publishing tool)