displaying hourglass during lengthy tests

[mrbean]

I've seen several threads with different solutions.  Just wondering if there are any opinions as to the better way to display the hourglass to the user during lengthy tests being called from TestStand.

1) I see in TestStand V3.5, in the testexec.llb, a VI called Full OI - Set Busy.vi.  I thought I could call that before/after the lengthy tests, however, I don't want to clutter my main sequence with a bunch of calls to this VI.  I could encapsulate those tests within their own subsequences.  Is there a pre/post condition method of calling this instead?

2) I noticed in TestStand a Label.MousePointer parameter, but I'm not sure how to use it.  I was hoping to set it in the pre/post condition - expression area.

Thoughts?

[Gavin F]

Hi mrbean,

You won't be able to call the VI or use the Label.MousePointer property in the pre/post expressions, but you can call the VI in pre/post substeps to hide them from the sequence visibly. 

If you have a couple of steps that you know you want to do this to, you could use custom steps and use the VI in their pre/post substeps. 

If you want to do this for all of the steps in your sequence, you can call the VI in the sequence file's pre/post substep callbacks.  You can edit this by going to the menu Edit -> Sequence File Callbacks.. and edit the first two callbacks named SequenceFilePreStep and SequenceFilePostStep.