NI TestStand Idea Exchange

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When you are running an execution and you want to check if a step will execute or not depending on the precondition you have to go to the step, browse to the precondition, copy it and paste it in the Watch View...

Wouldn't it be great if you could add your step precondition the the watch view with a single click (like VS "Add Watch")... ideally I'd have another entry in the menu below called "Debug" ot "Watch View" with submenu-items: "Add Precondition to Watch View", "Add Pre-expression to Watch View", "Add Pre-expression to Watch View"

Vote for me!!!

<<- N --.>

Right now it is pretty easy (Thanks guys!!!) to go from a variable that is of a custom type, and find it in the types palette.

This is great, and it should just stay the way it is.

The problem comes when you have an array of type "FOO". When you try to do this trick on the array of type FOO, it doesn't work. Arrays of type "Foo" are common enough, and it would be great to be able to go directly to the type definition for the array element, something like this:

(I could see removing the "Types" selection right above the new element circled in red -- it has limited functionality even now).

Since TS. 4.5 there is support for .net generics

For me this was one of the biggest advancement of this release !

For future release it would we nice to have support in the foreach StepType to iterate

though the collection in state-of-art way.

At the moment you have to get the size and then use a for-loop

with indexing you desiered element. For doing this you have to use at least

two statements. With foreach and collection support no statement is neccessary.

Regards

Juergen

Shortcut key for MainSequence run

Hi,

Many times I need to run the MainSequence after a change somewhere in a subsequence. Because there is no shortcut key for that action (First go to the MainSequence then Execute->Run MainSequence) it is pretty time consuming. It would be nice to have that shortcut key in TestStand.

Best Regards,

Jick

Hello all TestStand fans,

For my recent project i had to modify the frontEnd callback.

=> According to the TestStand help, the only path where this file can be created is in TestStand default path or in the corresponding user path.

.... But no where else !!!!

It would be nice to be abble to configure the frontEndCallback path in the configure options !

=> Doing so, the path of this callback could be placed everywhere ! (In the configuration path would be nice !)

=> Doing so, it would be possible to create a frontendcallback for each configuration !

I am a TestStand developper, a NI partner, not a TestStand end user.

My work is to provide custom sequencer for my customer.

On my computer i had to manage many different sequencer !

If file are threated as global ... i had to customize my computer to switch among my different sequencers ! (Or to create virtual PC's : Virtual box / VmWare ... )

If all TestStand configuration files where identified in the "Configuration directory", my only work to switch from 1 project to an other would be to point on a different Configuration path !

I think that if it is impossible to do so, today, is because this callback is loaded before the "Station configuration" is loaded ?

My ideas should be applyed to all global files ...

Station callbacks
Localization file
... i dont't know the behaviour of all files !

Please get rid off all "Global files" !
Replace them by files, with path configuration in the "Station options" ... and located in the "Configuration path"

Doing so, will also simplify the deployement process !!!!

=> A single path copy ... is quite easyer as a complicate deployment process !

Thanks for your help.

Manu.net

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When profiling an sequence, it's would be useful if also the version of .NET DLL that was loaded/unloaded could be displayed in the report in a new column next to Item Name. I have not found a way to do do this. I think this would be helpful to be able to compare performance of different versions of DLL:s, and also when troubleshooting sequences (e.g. when adding search directories and wrong version of a DLL is used by mistake).

Currently the only way I found to see version loaded was using tools like Visual Studio or Process Explorer, but that's run time, requiring breakpoints etc - the above approach would provide an better overview of the execution, and is more convenient.

Step Name in Precondition Builder

Currently, the step icon for a custom step type is defined statically:

It would be nice if the step icon could also be specitied via expression. This would allow step types where the step icon changes based on the configuration. For example, the lock step could be made more intuitive:

Current static icon:

With dynamic icons:

To accomplish this currently, you need to update the icon for the step via the API in the edit substep, which is cumbersome and adds coupling between the edit substep code and the icon names.

Intelligent Variable Creation

The menu to create a new variable (right click on variable in an expression edit control and select Create "VariableName") contains all the data types you can use for the variable, however, in the LabVIEW Panel (and other similar panels or dialogs) there is enough context information about the variable to suggest a data type, for example, if the variable is in a control of type Double we know we should create a Numeric variable. TestStand should add the contextual suggestions to the top of the context menu and bold them so that I can more quickly select the data type I want most of the times, then have a separator and put the normal menu so if I don't want that data type for some reason I can still choose the other data types (see attached image).

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The current method of viewing the contents of a 2D array variable can be difficult to read if you have many elements. My suggestion is to add a feature that allows a right click on the 2D array variable and select a popup to see the array in a row/column format. It would be nice to able to edit the contents with this view as well.

I have uploaded an image of a TestStand view of an array and a LabVIEW view for comparison. Looking at the LabVIEW version, by having the contents in a row/cool format, adding the scroll bars and index display, I can easily see my array contents.

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Hi,

Exactly as in subject.

I thought that it will be good if the developers could collapse blocks of code which are in between of the Flow Control or/and Synchronisation step types.

I think about the mechanism we know already from TestStand which hides block of code: i.e. Setup, Main, Cleanup section in the sequence, or it can hide variables. It is a little "+" and little"-" to expand the content of the type of variables.

The types of steps I think of were mainly types from Flow Control and some types from Synchronisation. It would be good if for example we could collapse If-Else-ElseIf-End, Select-End, Case-End, While-End, DoWhile-End, etc statements

I think this functionality could improve the readability of the sequence, and helps the developers to have a better view on the whole sequence.

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Standardize Closing Of Tabs

condition builder improvements

I think it's time to improve condition builder --

The features of it are rather limited right now -- All I can do is AnyOf and AllOf. What I want to do is NoneOf and OneOf. To some extent I can "DeMorgan" myself to get to these, but that often makes it less logical to read -- and condition builder is all about making it easy to read crazy long complicated conditions.

If we can get new functions added to TestStand (like NoneOf and OneOf as sisters to AnyOf and AllOf), and those functions supported by the condition builder, that would be great. (this means the "Insert XXXX" button and "change to XXX" buttons would rpboably need to be rearchitected since there would be too many choices there).

Another idea with Condition Builder would be to support "Negating" a condition. This way I could choose "Insert AllOf", highlight it, and choose "Negate" and it would change to "! AllOf:"

I could ALMOST do this negating manually now in the expression after the building of it (use condition builder, choose OK, then manually tweak the expression to add my !'s), except that once condition builder now sees !AllOf() it won't process the expresion anymore and split it into the condition tree.

How about something like this:

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The MOST annoying part of working with TestStand is the fact that the developer has to re-enter e-v-e-r-y bloody value for a given parameter when the prototype changes in a LabVIEW VI.

As a sister idea to this one, what is more annoying is the fact that when the container exists for a previous step and is already populated with all the values that you want to repeat elsewhere, TestStand does not allow you to copy and replace a parameter! Unless there a non-obvious way of doing this (I will attempt a few unorthodox ways to get this done). If so, it should be an obvious method and not something that requires contortions to accomplish a simple copy & paste.

Even if the copy & paste could be done from within the parameters, ie: ability to select multiple values and paste them all into the parameter. This is such a basic feature is most or all programming languages and applications that I cannot believe it does not exist in TestStand.

In this particular case, the values are from Locals. variables. And there are lots of them; between two parameters, over 300!!

Let's get on with the times!! Improve the copy & paste feature, even for an ultra basic request like the one Ray Farmer requested in 2011.. See this link:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand-Idea-Exchange/New-Paste-Value/idc-p/2504798#M721

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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Add Step Precondition To Watch View with 1 Click

improve linkages between variables and type definitions

Foreach- StepType that supports Net. System.Collections.Generic

Shortcut key for MainSequence run

FrontEnd Callback path should be modified in the configure options ....

Teststand Execution Profiler - add loaded DLL version info

Step Name in Precondition Builder

Support Expressions for Custom Step Type Icons

Intelligent Variable Creation

Add a "No Comparison" comparison type to the String Value Test

Expose the sequence file version number to be visible in the file properties.

Provide a popup that shows the contents of a D array like an Excel spreadsheet.

Feature request for sequence file editor: Expand and collapse functionality for every step type which has to have END step type.

Variables comments shouldn't be deleted if data type is changed

Standardize Closing Of Tabs

condition builder improvements

Updating sequence call names automatically

LabVIEW steps Shoud recognize Green clusters.

Make the property loader window resisable

Allow to copy & paste ALL values from a container from one step to another step