Teststand sequence viewer

[BrandonK]

I am currently getting ready for a review of my TestStand sequences.  Many of the people doing this review do not have Test Stand install on there computers, and are not able to view my sequences in a fashion which would but understandable.  I would be very grateful if you could give me any ideas for allowing these people to view the sequences, whether it be a free sequence viewer or a way to export my comments and/or step names and descriptions for each step into a text document, or any other possibilities.  I have tried to create sequence file documentation but it is outputting too much information and in a view which is still hard to read.

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

Currently, the only thing available is to convert the sequencefile(s) to a text or Html document using the Tools | Documents....

SequenceFile Viewer would be nice.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Patrick_P.]

Hey BrandonK,

Unfortunately Ray is correct.  The only way to do documentation for a sequence file is from the Tools menu.  If you did get a sequence file viewer, would you basically just want it to be exactly like the sequence editor?  Would it be necessary to view all properties and settings for a step or just see each of the steps and their type?

[Brandon K]

It would not be nessessary to view all properties or settings for a step, just the step name, step type  and a way to tell if it is a sequence call, action, pass/fail, etc.  If the step was a sequence call it would be nice to see the sequence it is calling also.  Skipped steps would not need to be included.  Using the documentation tool I have made created a document but it still has alot of unneeded information making it hard to read.

[RayFarmer]

Is that after using the various options to switch properties out of the report?

As to regards a reader, I think you would have to include precondition, post action, post expression, step type. If it has  a code module you would want to beable to identify its' inputs and outputs. If its a sequencecall, you want to beable to open up the associated sequence.

The big difference between a reader and the SequenceEditor, is that there is no code associated with the code modules, except for the sequence call, you are not going to run the sequencefile and you will not beable to edit the sequence file.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[Patrick_P.]

Ray and Brandon,

Thank you both for your feedback regarding this issue.  I am going to create an internal product suggestion for this.  If either of you are interested in creating a suggestion for this as well you can create one at here.

Message Edited by Patrick P. on 02-21-2007 07:43 AM

[EadieU]

For anyone who finds this thread, there is now a Sequence File Viewer program available for free in the NI TestStand Toolkit for Large Application Development.

[Dennis_Knutson]

What would I take to modify it so that current versions can be loaded?

[Manooch_H]

The SequenceFile Viewer has been updated to view 4.1.x and prior Sequence Files. As Mark mentioned, it can be found  in the NI TestStand Toolkit for Large Application Development

Note: 4.2 Sequence Files cannot yet be viewed with the SequenceFile Viewer.

[Mustanghipo65]

Decided to use this viewer to allow our QA to keep track of changes; also allows our QA to check test sequences with what was planned, such as tolerances and general flow. After saving to a XML file I ended up with a 33mb file. The sequence viewer took over 5 min to open it and had about a 2-3 second lag between mouse clicks when browsing the file. We are having to go back to allowing QA to have access to our user's development machine which basically disables our computers for development untill QA is finished with it. We would gladly pay for a version of TestStand that has only viewing and fille diff capabilities. This would allow for our quality guys to perform their software control tasks much like they do for code written in C++, ATLAS, CVI, VB, LASAR, and basically every other language.