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6 Kudos
flaborde

Intelligent Variable Creation

Status: New Submitted by Member on 02-12-2013 10:49 AM Comment

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).

4 Kudos
Al.B

Better expose the option to customize the TestStand menus and toolbar

Status: New Submitted by on 09-18-2012 04:33 PM 5 Comment

I have noticed that many TestStand users are not aware that the sequence editor menu bar and tool bar are fully customizable.  This option is fairly well hidden: You have to right click the toolbar (not a common operation) to access the "customize..." option.  There should be a way to access the Customize dialog from the TestStand Menus, perhaps in Configure:

 

customizeMenus.png

 

It would also be nice if this was accessible from the UI configuration tab in the Sequence Editor options.

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2 Kudos
Shawn_S.

Add Feature to Open TestStand 2012 Examples in Windows Explorer from Help Menu

Status: Declined Submitted by on 08-16-2012 04:38 PM 2 Comment

Hello,

 

Could we add a feature to allow the example programs that ship with TestStand 2012 to open up in Windows Explorer directly after clicking an separate option from the help menu?  Currently a help article comes up with a list of the example programs.  Upon clicking a link on one of the example programs the path to the example relative to the <TestStand Public> folder is revealed.  I think it would be easier from a usability stand point to add the ability to open the examples folder for review straight from the menu. 

 

NI TestStand Examples.png

 

Example Programs.png

 

Cheers!

 

Shawn S.

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17 Kudos
Shawn_S.

Context Menu Addition - Close All Except This File

Status: Completed Submitted by on 08-16-2012 03:40 PM 3 Comment

Hello,

 

Could we add an option to the context menu within TestStand that populates when one right clicks the tab for a *.seq file in the Sequence Editor?  I would like a feature that allows users to be able to close every window except for the selected window.  I've included a screen shot below for clarity.

 

CloseAllButThisFile.png

 

Cheers!

 

Shawn S.

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1 Kudos
Stryker_Software_Engineer

Custom Dialog Box Overriding the standard "Loop on Selected Steps" Dialog Box

Status: Declined Submitted by Member on 07-20-2012 12:43 PM 2 Comment

When developing code for the customization of the User (Operator) Interface, I would like the capability to provide my own custom dialog box for “Loop on Selected Steps” by overriding the standard dialog box that TestStand provides. TestStand provides this standard dialog box when the command kind “Loop On Selected Steps Using” is executed.

 

The problem in our production environment often is our production technicians are required to (manually) perform interactively with a series of sequence steps and repeat those steps 29 times (Our strict regulatory guidelines). Most of our technicians are technologically challenged in our production environment. In our environment, I have developed the TestStand User Interface to where the TestStand Execution and Sequence Views are hidden to production operators but visible to the developers (engineers) and administrators for trouble shooting capability.

 

If a custom dialog box cannot be done, at least provide the capability to where I can programmability change the properties of the “Loop On Selected Steps”. At least allow the dialog box to be programmability set to where I can set the number of loops, set the stop condition, stop expression, enable/disable the controls or hide the dialog box without the operator needing to manually entering those values into the dialog box.

6 Kudos
snowpunter

Standardize Closing Of Tabs

Status: Completed Submitted by Active Participant on 07-12-2012 02:59 PM 9 Comment

Current shortcuts for TestStand include Ctrl-D to close executions and Ctrl-F4 to close a sequence file. However, both of those windows show up as tabs in the current GUI layout.

 

Every modern internet browser allows the user to close a tab with Ctrl-W. This would also be a neat feature when only trying to close one report at a time when viewing the results from multiple UUTs, instead of closing all reports by closing all executions with Ctrl-D.

19 Kudos
NitzZ

Custom Step to detect "Step Deletion"

Status: Under Consideration Submitted by Active Participant on 05-09-2012 06:07 AM 4 Comment

It would be nice to have some kind of Custom Step which gets triggered when a step is deleted from a sequence. Something very much similar to "OnNewStep" which is triggered when a Step is dropped into the sequence.


We may have an option, say, "OnStepDeletion" to detect the deletion of a step. This will be very helpful in many of the step usages.

 

The TestStand Flow Control Steps like "IF" and "FOR" use the "OnNewStep" to create an "END" step along with them when they are dropped. But there is no means to automatically remove the created "End" when the "FOR" or "IF" Steps are deleted from the sequence. The proposed "OnStepDeletion" can be handy in such cases.

I hope you all will support this idea as it will make many of the functionalities more efficient. 

 

Regards,
Nitz 

(PS : Forgive me if anyone has posted this idea already. I couldn't find any such posts)

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35 Kudos
Teds

Message Box enhancement with Preview button.

Status: Under Consideration Submitted by Active Participant on 03-28-2012 11:56 AM 1 Comment

I would like to enhance the TestStand Message Box step to add a 'Preview' button.  When selected, it would show how the currently configured message box will look when run.

 

I find that I am often switching around the text, fonts, and other aspects and would like to get that straightened out before run time.  I know you can run the step individually by selecting 'Run Selected Step' but that is tedious, plus you have to take into account preconditions and other functionality.  Normally, I have to remove the precondition (if there is one) as often the step cannot be run by itself.

 

So here is my example with the button added.  Not exactly sure what tab it would belong on.

 

 Message Box with Preview


 

Thanks,

 

Paul

 

43 Kudos
asbo

Allow the grouping of sequences within a sequence file

Status: Under Consideration Submitted by Member on 03-19-2012 09:58 AM 5 Comment

In order to logically sort sequences within a sequence file, you have to add either a prefix to your sequence names or add dummy sequences between sequence groups:

 

  

 

What would be great is if I could could add sequence groups which let me organize my sequences logically in a tree view. Unfortunately, I can't shoop my vision of that at the moment.

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0 Kudos
Nossia

Print functionality addition

Status: Declined Submitted by Member on 01-27-2012 05:01 PM 2 Comment

Create option to print selected components (Script, variables, Step Settings etc) this would be useful on several levels, it would make tracing thru long scripts easier, would provide a quick means of providing feedback on errors and other situations which lend themselves to having more than a single screen of information available concurrently.

3 Kudos
PHetesi

Add ability to use TestStand message popup to perform selction from a list

Status: Declined Submitted by on 01-19-2012 04:26 AM 2 Comment

It is not possible to perfrom manual selection (for example, between different products to be Tested by the sequence file) in TestStand by using the Message Popup.

 

It would be great if a TestStand Message popup had pull down list or radio buttons or etc. to provide manual selection from a list.

pull down list and the picture paths could be populated from a 2D array, something similar like this LabVIEW VI:

 

 

Select_from_list.JPG

 

The reason why I requested this feature is that I am developing a Test solution, where we have to

manually select the product to be tested. My test solution will be used by lots of Test Engineers in the future.

 

I know that this feature can be realized with a LabVIEW VI easily, but this case, I have no control on the arrangement, layout and stile of this dialog box in the future. In LabVIEW, the pull dow list, buttons and picture can be put everywhere

 

TestStand would provide a standard arrangement for this dialog.

 

layout.JPG

 

3 Kudos
Jackie_B

Column Resize Indication if Column is Resized so that it Disappears

Status: Declined Submitted by on 10-31-2011 04:30 PM 1 Comment

Currently, a column can be resized so that it appears the column has disappeared altogether. It would be preferable if there was a way to indicate that a column has been resized so that users know that they can expand the column if they want to see that parameter. 

 

For example, normal-sized columns: 

normalcolumn.png

 

What currently happens when the Type column is minimized:

resized column.png

 

Product Suggestion so that user knows that Type still exists.

resized column.png

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4 Kudos
CyGa

Update step fields after using an Edit Step

Status: Declined Submitted by Active Participant Active Participant on 10-26-2011 10:07 AM 11 Comment

When you use an edit step to modifiy the values contained in your step inputs/outputs, the fields are not updated with the new values. You have to close the step tree branch and reopen it to see the updated values. A good idea would be to refresh the step section after the execution of an edit step !

Update step val after Edit Step

29 Kudos
Al.B

Make "OnNewStep" its own subStep type

Status: Under Consideration Submitted by on 10-10-2011 01:13 PM 2 Comment

Currently, if you create a step type and name it OnNewStep, it will execute when an instance of the step is created.  This is pretty confusing to new users - why don't we just have an OnNewStep substep type (like prestep, edit, etc)? Custom steps would then just be meant to be called manually using the Step.ExecuteSubstep() Method as documented in the help.

 

onNewStep.png

 

We could keep the "onNewStep" custom step functionality to maintain backwards compatibility with older step types. 

1 Kudos
Jackie_B

VISA Step Insert for TestStand

Status: Duplicate Submitted by on 09-03-2011 04:06 PM 2 Comment

The usual Insert Step menu in TestStand:

suggestion1.png

 

What the menu might look like with a Insert VISA step:

suggestion2.png

 

A VISA>>Write step would replace a LabVIEW Action Step such as the one I used below for direct Instrument control from TestStand. Queries would look similar and be able to set limits on the returned value.

suggestion3.png

 

LabVIEW VI for the power supply command to the VISA instrument setup from M&A Explorer.

suggestion4.png

 

This is “PS1” in Measurement and Automation Explorer uses Alias Name.

suggestion5.png

 

Example of Query instrument to an Agilent 34970A using Alias Name “DM1” setup in MAX.

suggestion6.png

 

However, a little more complicated than a single string command from the menu. Might take several Write steps first.

suggestion7.png

 

Possible Uses:

  1. Debugging
  2. Instrument control without additional software or programming languages.
  3. Ability to immediately add new instruments and modify existing sequences without an instrument driver. Demonstrates the quickest possible way to gain instrument control with the least effort (for simple systems).
  4. Simple test sequences can be written right away making it easier for technicians or engineers to write tests.
  5. VISA sequence steps can be dragged to the palette and easily re-used.
    suggestion8.png 
16 Kudos
ChrisHawk

Make Output panel available as UI ActiveX Control

Status: New Submitted by Member on 08-19-2011 04:03 AM 2 Comment

The output messages are a good way of sending status messages from the test solution to the end user.  However the control is not available as one of the controls that can be added to user interfaces.

OutputMessage.jpg

Can this control be made available to be quickly added to a UI and linked to the execution view manager.

Also adding some kind of API interface to be able to capture these messages to a log file would remove the need to implement any custom logging mechanisms.  If possible ability to open multiple file logs within the engine at the same time with each file given some kind of filter rules (for example Severity=”error” or ExecutionId=5).  If logs had to be attributed to an execution ID then they could automatically be closed when the execution ended, otherwise the user would have to manually close each file which could get forgotten and TestStand end up with lots of open file references.

0 Kudos
DeniseTucker

Update LabVIEW modules displaying their panels with Windows settings, such as increasing the scrollbar

Status: Already Implemented Submitted by Member on 07-07-2011 12:03 PM 2 Comment

LabVIEW executables update to the Windows settings when run.  So, if the scrollbar size is increased (as is helpful with touch panels), the scrollbars adjust.  However, TestStand called LabVIEW modules running under the Run-Time Engine do not update in size.  This makes it hard to customize the value to the user's needs.

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17 Kudos
Manooch_H

Add Quick Drop to TestStand

Status: Completed Submitted by Active Participant on 06-22-2011 03:43 PM 4 Comment

How many of you would benefit from the addition of a feature similar to LabVIEW's Quick Drop?

The functionality that initially comes to mind would be typing to search for your desired step type or step template and dropping it into the sequence you are developing. Please add comments for any additional functionality you might like to see in a TestStand step Quick Drop (for example, you may want TestStand to automatically navigate to the Step Properties of a step after it is dropped from Quick Drop).

Please also add comments for any other situations/scenarios (outside of adding steps to a sequence) where you might benefit from a Quick Drop-like functionality. Thank you.

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7 Kudos
AllenR

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

Status: New Submitted by on 05-25-2011 08:56 AM 1 Comment

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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0 Kudos
AllenR

Add immediate execution window.

Status: Declined Submitted by on 05-25-2011 08:28 AM 9 Comment

The idea here is to have a widow that you can execute expressions while at a breakpoint or paused.   I would also like to be able to execute the expression while not running the sequence.  Many times I am not sure how will be returned by an API expression and it would be nice just to execute it.  I know that not all expressions can be executed outside running the sequence, but many can.  This would be a nice feature so you can test expressions without running the whole sequence.