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Draw Image Relationships (ERD?)

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Lets say I have a set of steps to perform.  And each step has a goto at the end defining where it should go under what conditions.  Each step is very basic and will only go to one of two places.  I'd like to allow the user to visualize this flow and relationship with an image that has steps represented as bubbles, or boxes, and then arrows going to the various other steps with the condition along the arrow.

 

The closes I've seen is the yED tool found here, which can work on an excel file, defining the items and their relationships. Unfortunately this can't be invoked programatically and that's kinda what I want.

 

I've seen some people write their own code to show this in a 2D picture control but that sounds like a lot of work.

 

I don't currently have Visio but is that an option?  It seems over kill.

 

Are there any other tools or options people have found, for drawing an image that has arrows pointing from steps to steps?  I currently don't have any requirements on how it looks so basic is fine.  Of course as soon as the user gets it they will probably have opinions.

 

EDIT:  It seems this type of diagram maybe called an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)

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It is pretty easy to put images on front panel controls and then move them around. You would have to have a button or other front panel control with images for everything you want. Send the objects offscreen and only bring them into position as you need them. This could get to be pretty large if you want to have a LOT of steps though. For simple diagrams it would be pretty easy to send the references into a vi which controls everything in the 2d space. It is kind of similar to game engine program, but there is no need to grow or shrink an object into the distance. You would need to turn of the vertical and horizontal scrollbars to keep the user onscreen. Using buttons might also be nice to allow the user to click them and pop up some detailed help data if they are confused. This would be simpler than mapping and tracking mouse clicks.

Glad to answer questions. Thanks for any KUDOS or marked solutions 😉
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The old State Diagram Toolkit used a picture control.

 

 

 

Yes you will have to track where items are located in the picture so that you can tell which widget was clicked on.

 

So you could use the picture control if all else fails.

 

The plus side would be that you will not have complications of trying to interface with thrid party software since you will be rolling-your-own from step one.

 

Ben

 

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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LV Trivia!

 

To the best of my knowlege, it was an over-sight (did not password protect) in the State Diagram Editor that exposed for the first time X-nodes and scripting.

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Solution
Accepted by topic author Hooovahh

I haven't checked, but I'm guessing this can be done with Graphviz, along the lines of Darin's example here - http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/tree-to-picture-draw-tree/m-p/2717451#M805454


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@Ben wrote:

LV Trivia!

 

To the best of my knowlege, it was an over-sight (did not password protect) in the State Diagram Editor that exposed for the first time X-nodes and scripting.

 

Ben


XNodes didn't exist in LV 7.x. I assume you're thinking of external nodes and the int to enum feature.


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You may be right tst.

 

I do recall that durring a private visit to NI and pesterting them about wanting to meet the guy that invented the Picture cotrol, noticing a sign over a set of cubes labled "X-nodes" and when I asked, my guide indicated they could not tell me about those.

 

Sorry to polute the thread!

 

Ben

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Yes in doing some searching the State Diagram Editor came up several times.  I couldn't however find a download to the old toolkit, and my developer suite DVD archive doesn't go back far enough.

 

I actually downloaded Graphviz but had a hard time getting it to work, that linked example is just what I needed, thanks.

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We have Visio at work and I have a copy at home - I find it incredibly useful for doing all sorts of engineering/software diagrams - it has many different stencils for diagrams built in - some of the common ones I use are for flow charts, state diagrams, database table relationship diagrams - it's also really useful for showing a networked system (e.g. multiple nodes with different network addresses) and also generic software architecture diagrams (e.g. showing Windows / RT / FPGA and the main 'function' modules associated with each).

 

In my last company we used Visio pretty extensively for doing cable / wiring diagrams.

 

I use it at home for doing floor plans and just used it to do a scale drawing of a set of steps I was building 😄

 

If you don't have it, it's expensive and there are other tools available but if you do have it or can justify it, it's a useful tool to have (and worth learning - it's not that intuitive...it is an MS product, after all)!


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