I think he means close subVIs that were originally closed.
Right now when you step through a VI you have two options when you get to a subVI call. You can step over it (subVI runs without opening its BD) or step into it (subVI FP & BD open). When you are done stepping through the subVI you can step out, but the FP and BD stay open. It would be nice if you could step out of the subVI and have the FP and BD close behind you.
Just today I was stepping into a bunch of sub VIs to trace a bug. A 'step out of, and close VI' button would certainly help keep the screen clear with each open VI having both the FP and BD open.
Additionally, ctrl+down will step into the VI, ctrl+right will step over the VI, ctrl+up finishes and steps out of the VI, but leaves it open. Ctrl+left is a logical shortcut for step out and close 🙂
Red in LabVIEW typically means abort, breakpoint, error, broken wire (if you choose to show red-x's, which I don't), or deprecated. Maybe we could keep the function but change the glyph / glyph color...
I like the goal of this idea. There's a variation, and I think I'd like both to be implemented...
When I am single stepping, I often step down into several layers of VIs, one by one. Then I find the bug that I need to fix. I would like a "Step Into And Close On When Finished If Not Already Open", so that if I just continue running (i.e, unpause the VI), all the VIs that I opened while stepping down would just close, so I don't have to step back out.
I would also like when I Abort to close all the VIs that I used this special "step into" function *except* the VI that I click Abort on -- because that's the one I need to edit.That's why I named the function "When Finished" and not "When Leaving VI" -- there are a couple ways that I could be finished.
I know that the idea as I've described it is a bit rough and unworkable, but these are significant use cases that I hope the community can include in the brainstorming.
Good approach to this issue, Aristos.
As I prefer to not apply the abort button, I would like to have the option to avoid the “auto-close” of a specific FP/BD. This might be accomplished e.g. by right-clicking anywhere on the FP/BD at run-time and unselecting “auto-close”. (I assume that you intend to introduce an auto-close property to each VI with a default value of true.)