Schematic Capture

[Dude_Man]

The Block Diagram should look more like a schematic capture tool.  It should have the ability to zoom in and out and pan.  Users should be able to draw their own Vis like ICs in a schematic capture program.  Parts and wires should be drawn on a grid.

[RavensFan]

Add a zoom function (yes, I said zoom. So sue me)  Already been suggested.

Block diagrams do have grids you can turn on.  Look under Tools/Options/Block Diagram

[JackDunaway]

To enable the grid, hit CTRL+SHIFT+3 (You can remember it's CTRL+#, a trick I read from Darren that I still remember since it's so intuitive, or check out LabVIEW Quick Reference Card).

To pan, open up "View > Tools Palette" and select the Scrolling Tool.

Draw your own VI's? You can edit the icon of a subVI to be any shape, as long as it fits into the 32x32px region. To make a smaller, non-rectangular shape, ensure that all pixels outside of your shape are white, which the IDE will recognize as "transparent".

As for zoom, that's a feature that customers/NI have been tug-of-warring over forever. tst has a "controversial" and pretty popular suggestion that was posted on the second day after the Idea Exchange went public.

Could you post a picture of your ideas of what LabVIEW should look like? Posts with illustrations typically get better community support.

[JackDunaway]

:::Edit::: Didn't read about CTRL+SHIFT+3 from a nugget, read about it from Aristos Queue while trying to fix one of my Unicode tangents.

[Dude_Man]

I can turn the grid on, but the wires and parts do not snap to the grid.  You would have to be familiar with a schematic capture tool to see the diffrence.  I think the block diagram would work better if it worked more like a schematic capture tool.

[JackDunaway]

Go to Tools > Options > Alignment Grid and make sure both "Show Block Diagram Grid" and "Enable Diagram Grid Alignment" are checked. Your "parts" should now snap to grid. Wires do not, however. I personally prefer all of my "parts" to snap to a 1px grid.

[G-Money]

Functionality already available in LabVIEW. Zoom is a duplicate idea (http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Add-a-zoom-function-yes-I-said-zoom-So-sue-me/idi-p/91...