NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Post an idea

The Search Directories.Insert method should only insert the directory if it is not already there.

The Method includes an index argument, if the directory is already there, then it should move the existing directory to the requested index.

While we were working on the shipping examples for DQMH, we discovered that the insert method was creating duplicates every time it was called. We implemented a work around that includes a for loop to check each of the items in the search directories list to see if it is the directory we are trying to insert, if it is, we delete it. Once the for loop ends, then we insert the directory where we want it.

You can see a video of the issue and how we worked around it here: DQMH 3.1 Only inserts the Delacor examples directory into Search Directories once

I am currently working on a project using the Teststand software's seq editor. This project has many steps, with nearly 3000 steps. During my seq editing and debugging process, sometimes I need to repeatedly jump in different sections and change some parameters. Oh my God, quickly finding a step between so many steps is driving me crazy, and I feel like my life is getting dark.

So I was thinking, why can't Teststand add a serial number display to the left of the seq edit box? This way, whether I am positioning a certain step or telling my colleagues which line needs to be changed, I simply need to obtain or convey a line number information. I believe that adding this information to an editing form is not particularly difficult.

Why not make it better to use?

Brothers, it's already 2023. Are you willing to continue enduring this pain?

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.

Thanks,

Paul

View All (4)

TestStand now works incredibly well with LabVIEW Classes, but there is a slight annoyance with the fact that you cannot call a Dynamic Dispatch VI with an empty Object Reference. The implication of this is that when you want to use a .lvclass, for every class instance you have to call a VI that does nothing more than return a wrapped class constant which then populates an Object Reference. Technically this is not a problem, but it means that your Sequence becomes very quickly littered with these VI's and it would be nice if there was a way within the LabVIEW module adapter settings for a class member call if when you first call a Dynamic Dispatch VI that, as within LabVIEW you can just pass in a class constant rather than a previously populated Object Reference.

The Problem - All the LabVIEW calls prefixed with 'NEW' are simply returning a class constant.

A Potentially more integrated way of doing this

The Dynamic Dispatch input has the option of either passing in an Object Reference, or a class constant.

All compatiable classes are listed in the value box now - either as .ctls, or alternatively as .lvclasses. This could also possibly be more akin to what happens in labVIEW when you call a Class which has available overrides that it gives you a tree view of the class hierachy to choose from.

Another way you could do this is to have a checkbox adjacent to the 'Class Path:' or 'Member Name:' named 'First Call' or 'New' or 'Construct' that then changes the 'Derived Class

The TestStand API doesn't provide a simple, robust mechanism allowing developers to programatically run sequences outside of the ActiveX UIs.

On many an occasion I've wanted to wrap the following basic functionality:

Run a specific sequence file (with or without a [typically custom] process model)
Wait for it to complete.
Retrieve the result.

It's something I've needed to do in all of the following situations:

Integrating into a customer's existing framework
Integrating into my own automated test framework
Providing a simple API to a customer
Creating customized UIs that rely on UI messages and events rather than the ActiveX Controls

The solution I've ended up defaulting to in the past has been some variation on:

Start with the full-featured C# UI.
Scrape out all visible ActiveX Controls, and hide the window so that it's running in the background.
Integrate a TCP/IP (or equivalent) client into the application that has the ability to listen for requests and then implement them through the AxApplicationMgr.
Build a TCP/IP server assembly that launches the client application and exposes the necessary API for simple interactions.

The approach above is time-consuming, error-prone, and feels like a hack -- but given that TestStand does not expose any easy mechanism for simply running a sequence, this is what I've ended up having to resort to.

right now with TestStand Sequence Analyzer utility, it is limited to analyzing a whole sequence file at once (or as much of it as you analyze before you hit the stop button).

However, if I have a long sequence file this can take quite a while, and I don't really want to wait.

Add a feature where I can select areas to analyze and have sequence analyzer just analyze those areas (for example -- select a few (sub)sequences in my sequence file, or a few steps within a sequence). This way I can limit the area of my analysis to where I know I made changes (or where I know my biggest problems are) and focus on those and not waste time analyzing everything else.

View All (2)

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.

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

NI has gone through a lot work to get the IVI Components integrated within TestStand as step types. I was wondering why NI has not incorporated the NI-DAQmx technology into TestStand as step types. I realize most TestStand developers would just create TestStand Adapters in the sequence step written in CVI or LV to interface to NI-DAQmx functions. Even the more advanced TestStand Developers would create their own custom step types to interface to NIDAQmx. I have just done that to where I have created a framework of custom DAQmx step types that I use as a small subset from all the NIDAQmx functions used from the NI-DAQmx library.

A nice feature of reporting is the ability to form the report file pathname using an expression. However, since the path is resolved before the client Sequence file is executed, you cannot use properties populated in the client sequence file as part of the report pathname. Currently the only way to accomplish this without modifying the model or reportOptions callback is by including the <UUTStatus> macro in the path expression, which enables a portion of the process model which copies the report to a new path based on the result of the UUT:

I propose that we add an option to force the report path to be re-evaluated after the client sequence to allow users to include properties evaluated in the client sequence file in the report file path without needing to include the <UUTStatus> macro. (basically exposing the ReportOptions.NewFileNameForEachUUTStatus property in the dialog)

The NI-VISA Adapter could present steps that would related to the VISA Interactive Control application (Write, Read, Write from File, Read to File, Assert Trigger, Read STB and Clear). This would allow a developer to create a sequence that checks/calibrates a test station consisting of source, sense and fixture loop-back elements with out dependence on a particular adapter or version of an adapter.

I admit that the IVI adapter is already available, but not everyone uses ( or likes ) IVI technology.

It would be nice to make Sequences public or private within a SequnenceFile.

With this you where able to make powerful SequenceFiles librarys. The biggest advantage of this

is you can show the consumer of the library only the "important" public sequences. The

private ones where invisible. This will help to avoid errors.

Regards

juergen

New Paste Value

You can copy the value of a selected variable to another element.

But you cannot paste the value into the selected element in an easy manner.

What you have to do is click into the selected variable’s value field and then Paste, but this doesn’t produce the correct result (for strings anyway)......

You end up with is double quotes!!!

Also if you had ‘Copy Value’ on multiple selected elements and pasted them then you get

So it cannot handle multiple selections.

It would have been better if you could have selected the place where you wanted to paste the value(s) and a new menu item became available ie ‘Paste Value’.

This way should also be able to handle multiple selections.

The problem with double quotes shouldn’t occur and should be corrected with the current pasting of values.

View All (1)

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)

View All (1)

VeriStand Adapter

It would be nice to integrate VeriStand into TestStand with a VeriStand Adapter.

This would make developing with TestStand and VeriStand much easier. The adapter would provide a lot of the VeriStand .Net api natively to testand:

- Deploy a system

- Set/Get Channel(s)

- Stimulus Profiles

- etc.

The adapter would be especially nice for integrating the new Stimulus Profiles in VeriStand 2011. It would allow for you to create the Stimulus Profile sequence and the Real-Time sequence. The Real-Time sequences would only be able to use a subset of TestStand steps, and would have to be different than a normal TestStand sequence because they are executed by the VeriStand engine, but the Stimulus Profile sequence could be a normal TestStand sequence.

The integration of the Stimulus Profiles would leverage a lot of features TestStand already has like source control, requirements, reporting, etc. Also, it would just give the user a much more intuitive experience when using the two together. Their test development would be centralized in TestStand instead of having to switch between the two different editors. It would also give better access to the parameters being passed into the Real-Time sequences at the TestStand level.

There are probably more benefits that could be realized by integrating TestStand and VeriStand, and this is a feature I would love to see as a user of both TestStand and VeriStand.

View All (1)

I have a bunch of times that I need to round a numeric variable in TestStand

example: Locals.A = round(Locals.B)

However, it's actually more complicated than that because I need to round it at the Nth position after the decimal point (for example). This means my expression becomes something like Locals.A = pow(10,-Locals.Digits) * round (Locals.A * pow(10,Locals.Digits) ) (for Locals.Digits == 3, this means that Locals=A becomes 0.123 when Locals.B is 0.1234)

This is a lot more code than I really want to write. If I am doing the same thing in MS Excel, I just say $B5 = round($B4,$A$1) or something like that. Notice how the digits of precision to round to is built into the round function. I'd love if TestStand round function could be expanded the same way

Round(Number, [option], [Digits])

NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Search Directories Insert method should not duplicate a search directory

Suggest adding line number display on the left side of seqedit

Message Box enhancement with Preview button.

Ability to Launch Version Selector from Error Dialog

Support Triple-Clicks in text fields

When calling Dynamic Dispatch VI's Allow A Class Constant To Be Used As An Alternative To The Object Reference

Improvements to API and examples to make it easier to run TestStand Sequences headless from LabVIEW

API that doesn't rely on ActiveX UI Components

TestStand Sequence Analyzer able to anlyze subset of a sequence file

Make "OnNewStep" its own subStep type

Step Types for NI-DAQmx

Add option to force the report file path expression to be evaluated after the client sequence executes

Add an NI-VISA Adapter

Add some OOP feature to a seqeunce

New Paste Value

Custom Step to detect "Step Deletion"

VeriStand Adapter

The ability to have line numbers for all steps in the left hand gutter.

Improved Round Function

Include diagrams in TestStand documentation showing execution order of process model callbacks