Front Panel Editing Mode

[Enrique]

Some people will prefer if the front panel is designed by a graphic artist. You don't want the graphic artist to touch (or even see) the source code or to change controls or indicators in the front panel to ones that will make the VI inoperable (replacing a numeric indicator with a string indicator, for example.)

It will be nice to have a "Front Panel edit mode" where you can only edit the cosmetics of the front panel: move controls and indicators, resize, change colors, etc., test the "Scaling Front Panel Objects" feature (if used), add clipart, etc., with constraints such as only replacing with the same datatype (unable to replace a numeric indicator with a string indicator), unable to change a control into an indicator and viceversa, unable to delete controls or indicators (but perhaps you can add and even link to an existing control or indicator.)

Regards;

Enrique

[SteveChandler]

Interesting idea - kudos! It would actually be very nice to be able to let someone who is an artist mess with my code without having to worry about the cleanup.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I have yet to see a panel redesign that didn't require some amount of code to make it work. Sure, you can make a lot of progress just replacing cosmetics and setting properties, but most of the interesting UIs need some event handling or conditional graying out/visibility/sizing etc. I'm honestly not really sure that there's any use for this. If you want to design a VI with functionality and a separate VI for the UI, I'm in full support of that --- there are various ways of achieving that separation, and detailing those will be the topic for the next Certified LabVIEW Architect Summit in March.

[Enrique]

Well Aristos, what you are mentioning is in essence a better idea than what I am proposing. It recognizes that the graphic artist can do more than just static/cosmetic things in the front panel. So, you might be right saying that there may not be any use of this idea as presented, but certainly there can be improvements in that direction. Separating VIs for functionality and for the UI sounds like a great way to allow the introduction of an artist in the development process without worrying much about changing essential source code.

[X.]

What happens if you password protect your VI? Can't you still drop controls on the FP?

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 6 kudos within 6 years after posting will be automatically declined.