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FTP: Specify settings by expression

See last changes at Undo Button

During development of sequences I often do "trivial" changes in order to check parts of the sequence that I do not want to save afterwards (e.g set Run Modes of steps to Skip). It would be very helpful to see the last changes that can be undone before clicking the Undo-Button arrow (the same applies for the Redo Button of course). This feature would have two major advantages, since one could...

... decide whether it makes sense to save the last changes or whether those were only for trial reasons and hence should be neglected
... undo several changes in one step

This is implemeted in Microsoft Office programs for example (see screenshot from MS Excel) and I use it there pretty often.

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Beable to Group variables

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If you have lot of code between an if, else, end statement steps (and other flow control structures for, foreach, while, and etc.), it would be nice to roll all that up so you can see more of the flow of the sequence. This will also help to know what steps are in those structures in large sequences. TestStand already has some code folding in the sequence, so this is an expansion of this. Many text and code editors have this feature and it would be a great feature for TestStand.

Looping inside the Expressions

Hi,

I have a table in file globals (2D array).

Each column of the table has an associate variable in file global.

For i want my custom step to run N time which is the number of rows in the table.

In each iteration, i want to take each value of the row and assign the value to the asscoiated variable in file global.

so, i want to have a looping mechanism in the expression.

I guess it is not explicitly present right now. Right now, i use teststand API to update the variable.

It would be nice to have looping in expression. This will improve my custom steps performance.

Regards,

Muthuraman S

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When I get called to look at an issue that has occurred with a test, the account logged into TestStand is typically a restricted user (i.e. Operator). Since the Operator account has very limited options, in order to really do much immediate troubleshooting I need to stop the test and re-run it in the Administrator account. At best this is inconvenient and inefficient if the spot the error occurred is late in the test. However, it is extremely frustrating when it's an intermittent run-time error and I can't do any real-time debug because Operator is logged in. The only real alternative I can think of (when the problem is intermittent) is to leave it logged in as Administrator so I can debug whenever it happens to occur. This is not really an acceptable practice in most cases.

It would be fantastic if there were an override that let's an Administrator provide the proper credentials to perform the desired task that would normally be off-limits to the Operator. The basic premise of this suggestion is similar to the functionality within Windows; if you try to connect to a secured location or perform a task that requires administrator privileges, a dialog box pops up asking you to enter authorized credentials.

I run into many situations where I wish this feature was present. The issue is not always within TestStand (could be a database connection issue, etc.), but it is TestStand that throws the error and in Operator mode the only option is "Run Cleanup". Significant time, effort, frustration, and efficiency could be saved if I could simply enter my credentials as an administrator to perform the tasks I need to do.

Regards

On an unrelated side note, I find it humorous that "TestStand" is considered a misspelled word when using the forum spell checker. 🙂

Often times a sequence file ends up containing dozens (or even hundreds) of sequences. Currently they all show up in the sequence editor Sequence Window as a flat list. It sure would be nice to view them organized in folders so that, for instance, all my sequences dealing with Rs485 communications or whatever could be group together in a "folder" called "RS485". Also it would be great if there was a displayable property for each sequence showing the date/time last modified. Then you could sort the list on that and see which sequences have changed. (really helpful if you have multiple guys who might be making changes.)

TestStand Sequence Grouping

We have multiple sequences in a file to perform steps that are common to particular subsystems. It would be nice to have the ability to group sequences within TestStand. I could envision this to look like a treeview or folder/file structure within the Sequence Pane. Currently, we have to use a common naming convention to group the sequences together like below:

GPIO_Inputs_[Seq1]

GPIO_Outputs_[Seq1]

GPIO_Outputs_[Seq2]

Communications_CAN_[Seq1]

Communications_Ethernet_[Seq1]

Communications_Ethernet_[Seq2]

Communications_UART_Port0_[Seq1]

Communications_UART_Port1_[Seq1]

Communications_UART_Port1_[Seq2]

With grouping, it could look similar to below:

Communications

CAN

[Seq1]

Ethernet

[Seq1]

[Seq2]

UART

Port0

[Seq1]

Port1

[Seq1]

[Seq2]

GPIO

Inputs

[Seq1]

Outputs

[Seq1]

[Seq2]

In addition, there could be a toolbar menu item to switch between showing the grouping or all so you could sort to find

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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 --.>

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

Hi! Feature request that I hope is fairly simple to slide into the next rev. It's incredibly frustrating that a Combo Box's values (for a control wired to the connector pane of a VI) aren't selectable like Enums and Rings in the LabVIEW Adapter. Instead of seeing a drop down with selectable options, I have to open the VI, (open the control if it's a typedef), edit its values, then see what the values are, close that dialog out, close the VI, back to TestStand and put in the value. This is all so I can just hard code a value. This is crazy. I tested this out in 2019 64-bit, btw, so maybe it's available in later versions, if so, please let me know.

Thanks for your time.

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TestStand Taskbar Jump List

Context Aware AutoComplete

Background --

I LOVE the autocomplete feature within any of the formula windows. Start typing Locals.F, and it allows you to autocomplete to Locals.Foo.

However, if you have Locals.Foo1, Locals.Foo2, Locals.Foo3, etc, you need to keep typing until you get enough to uniquely match the one you want, or start using the arrow keys in the list (or select with a mouse).

The problem is that if you just type Locals.F, the list of items that shows up is the entire list of Locals.*, in the order they are in Locals.* In reality, once I've typed Locals.F, I should only get the locals variables that start with F, so I don't need to down arrow through all the other Locals.Bar1, Locals.Bar2 that are inbetween Locals.Foo1 and Locals.Foo2 (because for some weird reason I really want the order of my locals variables to be Foo1, Bar1, Bar2, Foo2, Foo3).

So, let's restrict the autocomplete function to only show the items that match what I have already typed, or at least regroup the matching variables at the top of the list so they are easier to select from.

Even better would be to have it context aware. If the formula I am typing is "Locals.MyNumber = 3.1415 * Locals.F", and Locals.Foo1 is a string, Locals.Foo2 is an array of booleans, and Locals.Foo3 is a number, then it should skip over Locals.Foo1 and Foo2 because the context requires a number. Foo1, Foo2, Foo3 should all be in the list of items to choose from if I want to arrow up or down in the list (or use a mouse to select), but Foo3 should be the "defaulted" item that is used if I just hit enter after Locals.F.

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).

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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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

FTP: Specify settings by expression

See last changes at Undo Button

Beable to Group variables

Add code folding to flow control sections of steps.

Looping inside the Expressions

Implement "Administrator Override" option

Organize sub-sequences in a sequence file more like file directory structure

TestStand Sequence Grouping

Create a way to use the find/replace tool to select actual steps in the TestStand sequence editor instead of just listing matching text values in the find window

add check for obsolete methods/properties/events to Sequence Analyzer

Add Step Precondition To Watch View with 1 Click

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

Shortcut key for MainSequence run

Combo box Names and Values displayed like Enums and Rings for LabVIEW Adapter

Display sequence in a tree structure

TestStand Taskbar Jump List

Context Aware AutoComplete

improve linkages between variables and type definitions

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

Updating sequence call names automatically