launching a teststand sequence from labview

[david_jenkinson]

Hello,
This may sound a little backwards, but I would like to launch a teststand sequence from labview, and pass in some parameters. The vi I want to launch the teststand sequence from is a subpanel vi, whose parent is actually called by a sequence step, and it has access to sequence context. I'm fumbling around with what sequence of properties and/or methods I should use to accomplish this. Can anyone help?

Thanks
David Jenkinson

[Norbert_B]

David,

the question you are asking is kind of.... weird.
I am expressing this like that because you propably only need some modifications on existing Operator Interfaces (examples are supplied with TestStand!) for your application. If you need further modifications (e.g. special indicators for special functionalities of your testsequence) you should definetly work with UI Messages....

The reason i don't recommend you any solution for your question is the follwoing: You should not try call modules from TestStand which open new "TestStand-applications". You propably will mix up between the exections/UIs and end up in a mess. If you have one top-level UI (you definetly can have sort of popups) to control the whole sequences will be a better way.....

regards,
Norbert B.

Message Edited by Norbert B on 02-23-2007 03:47 AM

[Patrick_P.]

Hey David,

I wanted to reiterate what Norbert had said.  There are probably better ways to accomplish what you are wanting to do other than launching a new execution from your code module. While there isn't necessarily anything wrong with doing it and there are some situations that warrant launching a new execution, it can get you into trouble very quickly if you aren't careful.  If you describe your setup a little more, we can try and provide some other possible options that might be better architecturally.

[david_jenkinson]

I tend to agree with you both actually. My motivations for doing the above lie in wanting to re-use the same code to perform the same function. In hindsight, it would have been preferrable to code the sequence in labview, but I didn't anticipate needing to use the code in the scenario I want to re-use it in.
It is for a cell phone test platform. The teststand sequence which pushes a button (write tcp, expect the appropriate string responses based on some flags) is written in teststand.
We are coding a wizard sequence to set up test cases, which use a parent vi with "next" and "back" buttons, calling various subpanel vi's to perform certain setup tasks. One of those tasks involve wanting to push a button, whose sequence is already coded in teststand. So my natural inclination was to re-use code. But I think was I may end up doing is coding the sequence using a labview state diagram instead, and use that throughout.

I did actually manage to launch the sequence from labview, but ran into issues of it not having access to some of the flags in runstate.root for some reason (even though the precess model actually executed). We use a heavily modified process model with lots of data types passed to runstate, which are used throughout our test, so not having access to those caused the sequence to puke. I see there was an option in the newexecution method to pass the process model sequence in, but I dont' want to re-execute that, it already executed.

Anyway, thanks for the input.