how to display an array in a VB form

[Piero]

I am new to Measurement Studio. This could be a silly question.
I am so used to the front panel in Labview where you can have control/indicator arrays. You can expand an array to see several values at the same time. Plus you have an index display to scroll.
Is there any similar feature in Measurement Studio for Visual Basic or Visual C? If not, why not.

cheers

[Chris Matthews]

No, there isn't currently a tabular or array control provided with Measurement Studio. There are a few reasons for this. First off, remember, LabVIEW is a graphical language, there isn't anything that isn't a control or indicator on a front panel. The array control in LabVIEW is mainly there as the datatype for arrays, not specifically as a UI object, although it is frequently used that way.

In Measurement Studio, the focus of the User Interface components is adding the controls to Visual Studio that are needed for test and measurement applications. Visual Studio comes with a tabular type interface called the DataGrid control for displaying numeric and string data in a table format built-in. This is what you would want to use to display arrays. We
would definately consider adding a table type interface if our users needed a lot more functionality than was provided by the Visual Studio DataGrid control.

I know it can be frustrating going back and forth between the tools and seeing different things available. Remember, they are designed for different users though. Measurement Studio is designed to equip Visual Studio programmers to do Test & Measurement programming easily, it isn't designed to provide LabVIEW type functionality to Visual Studio users. So some LabVIEW functionality won't exist in Measurement Studio purposefully, and also some functionality in Measurement Studio that isn't in LabVIEW since it doesn't suit graphical programming.

Try the DataGrid control, and let us know if it doesn't meet your needs.

Best Regards,

Chris Matthews
National Instruments

[Piero]

Thank you for the extremely quick response.
I see your point and it's indeed what I guessed. I'm going to try the DataGrid control as you suggest. This control is designed mainly to display database contents, I see. However I'm definetely able to manage to display arrays and matrices with that.
Let's say, yet, that I'm feeling a bit disappointed. You know, the Labview graphical representations of arrays and matrices are cool and quite appreciated (at least to me who am used to mathematical programming). It would have required no effort from you to include them in the Measurement Studio widgets. For sure, nobody would have complained that you had betrayed the Measurement Studio "philosophy".
So if you are collecting suggestiong or feedback from the users on
this issue, please take note of mine.

Best regards

[Chris Matthews]

We will definately add it to the requested feature list. I wouldn't say it would require no effort from us. We would still want to develop a solid, full-featured native .NET control to handle tabular display. There is a lot more work in developing a very flexible and usable control like that than it may seem. Thanks for the feedback.

Chris