Darren's Weekly Nugget 11/08/2010

[Darren]

Cool LabVIEW 2010 Features Part XI: Export Data to Clipboard (or Excel or DIAdem)

I thought I was done with my "Cool LabVIEW 2010 features" series a few weeks ago, but then I stumbled across this one today:

These new Export Data options are available on Waveform Charts, Waveform Graphs, Tables, and Arrays (including constants!).  Choosing the Export Data To Excel or Export Data To DIAdem options will launch those apps with a new document containing the data.  Choosing Export Data To Clipboard will simply copy the data to the clipboard, at which point you can perform a Paste operation in whatever app you wish (Excel, DIAdem, Notepad, Word, LabVIEW, etc.).  Here are a few things I discovered when exploring this new feature:

• On Windows, the columns are tab (\t) delimited, and the rows are line feed (\n) delimited.  I didn't check other platforms.
• When using this feature with the Table control, it works best if you deselect Advanced > Show Selection on the table before exporting.  Otherwise, you have to select (i.e. highlight) the data you want to export in the table.  It seems to me that most of the time I'd want to export the entire contents of my table.

[Darin.K]

Given the frequency with which I use this Quick Drop Shortcut:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/QD-Shortcut-Paste-to-Array-Constant/m-p/1088366

perhaps we should see:

Cool LabVIEW 2012 Features Part LX: Import Data from Clipboard

I am assuming a fair number of cool features, and that very few of them will be in LV11.

[johnsold]

Darren,

I did a quick check on the Mac.  Only the first and last options (Export Data to Clipboard and Export Simplified Image...) are available.  Export to Clipboard uses the same delimiters (\t Tab and \n Line Feed).  It also has a Title line: "Time - Plot 0 Amplitude - Plot 0"

Thanks,

Lynn

[ohiofudu israel]

This is cool.

Thanks for the Nugget.

Ohiofudu

CLD

[mysticfree]

Is there a way to save a picture of the graph programmatically?  I was just thinking about how we test one of our products and if I could save the results of graph of part during test, this would be a helpful resource of part if it comes back to us under warranty.

[Darren]

You can use the Export Image method of the Waveform Chart/Graph to save a (simplified) image of it to disk:

Note that the Export Data feature I described earlier in this nugget is available through VI Server as well.

[PJS]

Sure.  Use the Export image method of the graph control.

[mysticfree]

"Export Image" property?  DO'H!  Of course.  In all my searching, I don't know how did I miss that one ....  boy, is my face red.  

[PJS]

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@mysticfree wrote:

"Export Image" property?  DO'H!  Of course.  In all my searching, I don't know how did I miss that one ....  boy, is my face red.  

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Happens to the best of us!

Promise.

[E.Garcia]

Noticed that the export to Excel function does not work after the VI is built into an executable. Reported and found out that LabVIEW R&D was already looking into this.