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X.

Option to connect wires through a dropped structure on the diagram

Status: New

Originally discussed here, this would be a time saver in quite a  few cases:

 

when dropping a structure (sequence, case, while or for loop, etc) over wires, an option should be provided allowing these wires to go through the structure (instead of ending up untouched UNDER the structure as is currently the case). Maybe with a modifier key?

 

Illustration:

 

Starting from this simple situation, where I want to do some comparison on the two strings (please imagine that the wires go through a lot of hooplahoops rather than directly to the indicators shown, as otherwise the solution is trivial):

 

ScreenHunter_001.jpg

 

I currently need to drop a sequence structure and do all the connection manually before creating a subVI (or doing stuff in a case structure, see below):

 

ScreenHunter_002.jpg

 

The suggestion is to go directly to this:

 

ScreenHunter_003.jpg

 

The reasons this would be useful are plenty, I think.

For instance, you want to do some sanity check on a bunch of wires now that you have added a new control on your panel. As of today, you need to drop a case structure, get wires you are interested in one at a time, connect them to the left of the structure, pass through the structure, connect them to the right of the structure, delete the wire underneath the structure, reconnect them to the right tunnels, etc...

Now, for a case structure, there might be some options on how to do that (for instance connect the wires through all cases? through the True case only?). Likewise for a while/for loop (you could autoindex at the entrance and/or at the exit, a mess that already exists anyhow).

 

My 2 cts.

5 Comments
silmaril
Member

Great idea!

For the case structure, I'd recommend to automatically generate a pair of Linked Tunnels and wire all cases.

 

X.
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

I have a slightly derived suggestion here (within the comments): drop a blank VI that can be connected from within the recipient BD and creates its own Controls and Indicators as a result.

jaustin_UF
Member

5+ years later, I'm guessing this is not happening. Comments from NI?

AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Has never become a priority. Didn't even come up in the LabVIEW NXG redesign priorities. Not saying it wouldn't be a nice to have, just saying that it has never been a high enough priority to beat out everything else that gets requested.

ArrSee
Member

Agreed, this would be a nice feature, maybe holding shift when dragging over wires to enable wire inclusion in structure.  A work-around I use is to put a VI (or primitive) on those wires, draw the structure over that, then remove the VI.  If one doesn't exist with your data types or desired spacing you use frequently, you can create a dummy VI with that terminal pattern and save it for re-use. 

 

It can be pretty quick using Quick-Drop shortcuts (Cntl+space). 

  • Select both/all wires,
  • QD then pick your VI / primitive that fits the wires, Cntl+Shift+i to add it to all wires. 
  • QD then pick your structure, draw it over the VI. 
  • QD then Cntl+r to remove the VI.