Where are VIs within an llb?

[Brian_Beal]

Is an llb really just something that stores the locations of VIs? I know that VIs can be stored in them, but are some VI's not really in there, just the "pointers" to VIs?

[DD]

At least in previous versions of LabVIEW, the llb file actually holds the
vi's in its list. This is why care must be taken to not let llb's get too
big. Large files, of course, take longer to process and you could loose
everything in the file if part of it becomes corrupted.

"Brian Beal" wrote in message
news:5065000000080000008AAC0000-1066448259000@exchange.ni.com...
> Is an llb really just something that stores the locations of VIs? I
> know that VIs can be stored in them, but are some VI's not really in
> there, just the "pointers" to VIs?

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> Is an llb really just something that stores the locations of VIs? I
> know that VIs can be stored in them, but are some VI's not really in
> there, just the "pointers" to VIs?

LLBs really do contain VIs, but remember that VIs point to and require
other VIs. This means that is is common for an LLB to contain 10 VIs,
and those refer to another 20 VIs stored elsewhere. This wouldn't be
any different if you had a folder with the same 10 VIs in it.

To collect all of the referenced VIs together, you might want to use the
Save with Options menu item. Select the Source Distribution option and
either build a new folder or LLB.

As others mentioned, large LLBs can get clumsy, and it is better to
organize things into functional groups stored in folders or in
local LLBs.

As an example, you can look at the examples or vi.lib folder.

Greg McKaskle

[Deepak Arora]

Hi Greg

Went through your reply , couple of times.And now I am bit confused , what is the best way of saving a vi with all it's referenvec vis i.e. How do I save a vi with all it's subvis ( in hierarchy) without losing any functionality ? I am using LabView 7.1 and 8.2 both.

Thanks

Deepak

[tbob]

Here is the way I do it.  First I create a folder for the entire project, like Test1.  Under Test1 I keep the main vi.  Also under Test1, I create sub-folders to hold various vi's.  There may be a folder called Support VIs that hold some subvi's.  There may be another folder created for some complex functions that require a main and some subvi's.  So it might look something like this:

Test1

- Main.vi

- Support FIles

    - Subvi1.vi

    - Subvi2.vi

    - SomeDLL.dll

- Serial Comm

    - Serial read.vi

    - Serial write.vi

    - Serial main.vi

 -  Config Files

    - Config.txt

    - LookUpTable.csv

Hope you get the idea.  If you want to transfer the project to another computer, you can zip the entire Test1 directory and just have the one zip file to move.

[Deepak Arora]

Hi Bob

But how do we do this ? I mean how do we do this inn labview ?

Thanks

Deepak

[altenbach]

---

@Deepak Arora wrote:

Went through your reply , couple of times.And now I am bit confused , what is the best way of saving a vi with all it's referenvec vis i.e. How do I save a vi with all it's subvis ( in hierarchy) without losing any functionality ? I am using LabView 7.1 and 8.2 both.

---

In LabVIEW 7.1 you would do a "Save with options..." and select "Development Distribution".

In LabVIEW 8.20 yo would make a LabVIEW Project and create a Source Distribution (Build specification...source distribution"..

[Dennis_Knutson]

I'd also like to point out that 'without losing any functionality' may be difficult. By default, the saving of VIs into an llb does not include VI's in the vi.lib folder. If you are using various toolkits, the save will not include those functions. If you then move to a different pc without the toolkits installed, the VIs will not run. If you are using hardware such as DAQmx, then this too has to be installed on the other pc.

[tbob]

The method I described is done by creating the proper folder structure using Windows Explorer and saving created vi's in the proper folder.  You can build a new vi and then select "Save As" and navigate to the proper folder to save it there.

[Deepak Arora]

Thanks a lot ! Bob

Project worked fine for me.