Darren's Weekly Nugget 08/14/2006

[Darren]

I hope everyone who attended NI Week 2006 had a good time...my favorite part was getting to ride a Segway, which I had always wanted to do.  My favorite product demo was probably the Rubik's Cube solver, complete with motion-controlled "robot" hands that actually solved a cube that I had personally mixed up.

Anyway, this week's nugget is part 2 in my "Cool Things Darren Added to LabVIEW 8.20" series of nuggets.  I remember thinking a while back that it was a little weird that I could right-click on a control in a Global or Control VI and choose Advanced > Hide Control, but then really have no way to show that control again, other than writing a VI to do it.  So in LabVIEW 8.20, you'll notice a new menu option to allow you to do this.  Just select Edit > Show Hidden Controls and Indicators in a Global or Control VI, and all hidden controls and indicators will be displayed, along with a summary dialog showing the labels of all controls and indicators that were shown.

The menu option is not available with regular VIs, but you can still use this feature relatively easily on them.  Just open [LabVIEW]\project\ShowHidden Core.vi, specify your VI name, and run it, and all hidden controls will be shown.

-D

P.S. - Check out past nuggets here.

[Jarrod_S.]

Great nugget. The feature sounds awesome! For those of you with 8.0 or before, remember you can find hidden controls only using their block diagram terminals. Right click the block diagram terminal and select Show Control to unhide it.

[TCPlomp]

hi Darren,

nice addition, only the path you give incorrect it should be:
[LabVIEW]\project\_ShowHidden\showhidden core.vi

And I'm glad it didn't work on non-debugable/non-blockdiagram vi's!

Ton

[HJPhilippi]

Hi Darren,

aside from your nugget, that's valuable as always: Are there any videos available on the Segway HT rides, the robot hands solving Rubik's cube and more? I couldn't attend NI Week this year and would love to see such stuff at least as recording.

Greetings,

Hans

[tst]

There are several sources for videos.

First, if you go to the NIWeek section on the site you will have access to the keynote videos, including one of Tim Dehne riding on a Segway like device designed and run using LV (look for the human transport vehicle presentation).

If you search the site for "blogs" you should find a links to some NI employees blogs, including one where they have videos from NIWeek.

Also, the LAVA forums have some videos shot by Michael Aivaliotis in the gallery section.

I don't think any of these include Darren, though.

[Kennon_Cotton]

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@tst wrote:

Also, the LAVA forums have some videos shot by Michael Aivaliotis in the gallery section.

I don't think any of these include Darren, though.

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Actually Darren (and I) went to the Salt Lick on Tuesday night with the LAVA/OpenG group and made a few of Michael's pictures but afaik no videos.

[DanyAllard]

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@Darren wrote:

The menu option is not available with regular VIs, but you can still use this feature relatively easily on them.  Just open [LabVIEW]\project\ShowHidden Core.vi, specify your VI name, and run it, and all hidden controls will be shown.

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To add this option to the tools menu you can use the attached llb to use it in regular VI.

Just drop it in LV82/project and you will get the "Show hidden controls and indicators ..." in Tools menu

Darren do you have some new way in 8.2 to cusomize the LabVIEW environment? Like /projet to add menu in "tools" menu, /wizard to add in "file" menu. Do you have some nugget on this subject?

Dany

[Darren]

There is some custom code in the LabVIEW source that one of my colleagues added to allow the Show Hidden Controls and Indicators feature to the Edit menu.  The reason it's not in the Tools menu is that we thought it would add too much noise to the already big Tools menu list, especially for a feature that would be rarely used.

-D