ZOOM

[Ray.R]

I use two 21" monitors... 😉

And I keep having to renew my prescriptions  😉  -- euh... for eye-glasses, that is.  😄

maybe the lack of sleep has something to do with it..  😐

age??????  nah... I'm way too young...  much younger than CC.... (hope he doesn't read this)

A zoom function could be interesting...  But I think the same can be achieved by changing the screen resolution.

I like to keep mine at 1024x768... AS A BALANCE BETWEEN SEEING MORE AND SEEING SOMETHING. (OOps CAPS lock)... My eyes are already acting up...   Something cafeine can surely cure... 😉

Actually, it would be a nice feature for instances when you want to have a global view of a vi and want to work within something like a Case Statement.  Zoom in and see only the portion you want to work with...  Unfortunately, I would probably abuse the feature and end up fillling the area with too much stuff and end up with an unreadable vi..

So for now, my best cure is sub-vi's... They have become my friends.  My eyes like them... And whoever inherits the code, too! 🙂

So, if the feature would exist, I might end up using (& abusing it).

And yes...  29" monitors would be nice... Especially Plasma.. 🙂  And panoramic view.    NI should sell those... 😉

JLV

$0.02 

[Sheldon_Stokes]

The better I get with LabView, the smaller screen I need to be productive.  There are certain real-estate hogs in LabView though.  For example a state machine with a lot of persistent data held in shift registers tends to take a lot of space.  All those shift register lines laid out neatly with labels can steal lots of room in your case structure. 

However, I tend to spread code out when I'm doing initial designs, and am still unclear on the direction I'm taking.  After I've got my algorithm down and it's time to clean the VI, I start to push it all together and neaten it up. 

In general I love high resolution screens and lots of real estate no matter what app I'm using.  (I run my pocketPC at 640x480)

Sheldon

[Antony_K]

Hi,

  Thanks for your replies. It seems that this is a hot topic! Based on your comments, it seems that LV started out on low res. screens, and object sizes (wires being too small etc.) weren’t a problem. Screen resolutions have increased, and now it is a problem (for some). LV8 seems to have a list of features as long as my arm, but not this???...

Altenbach – thanks for your reply – yes, a 2 x & 4x zoom would be adequate, and I wouldn’t imagine that it would be very hard for the LV dev team to implement! Thanks for the grid alignment tip – very handy – I couldn’t find it in the help (keyboard shortcuts etc.). Thanks again.

As for adjusting my screen resolution to compensate for this shortcoming… I don’t think so! Sorry, I expect more for the money!

Antony.

[NMaharajh]

I've never had the need for a zoom in/out feature in LabVIEW until I started doing LV-FPGA.
With LV-FPGA my diagrams start to look like schematics with multiple state diagrams and other loops running in parallel.
I prefer to keep it flat and wide with FPGA.

Message Edited by NMaharajh on 10-03-2005 11:31 PM

[dmertz]

LabView very much does need a zoom feature.  The navigation window doesn't help when you have to scroll around for 5 minutes just because a graph you put in the VI popped up at the very edge of the VI.  I'm sorry if I can't program to perfection, but I just need something that will work and is user friendly enough.  I can't spend hours putting it into a tiny little box that is nice and neat. 

That is my opinion.

[HuwMajor]

Although it probably is my poor "programming" abilities I regularly find i need a zoom. I don't care how much you use sub vi's eventually you cant break it down any smaller and the vi becomes unmanageable. You wouldn't keep functions in a textual programming language to less than 10 lines long just so that you don't have to scroll so why should i have to put up with this in labview.

I've only got a 12" screen on this laptop with a measly 1024x768 resolution, a couple of operators, some wires and some case statements and my vi doesn't fit on the screen.

I don't think the fact that labview uses lots of single pixel elements (such as wires) is a good reason not to use zoom. Sometimes as was previously mentioned you just want to zoom out to find where labview has 'hidden' that control you just added, you don't need to be able to see where every single wire goes you just want to get a better perspective.

You could make it a preference that is disabled by default if there is that much concern over bad vi layout, only turn it on if you want it.

[yenknip]

I tend to like having the bit of the diagram I'm working on in the middle of my screen, so I pan to it. hold ctrl + shift and the mouse changes to the drag icon 🙂

[JeffOverton]

Also, for indicators that appear way on the edge of a VI, I think it would be a lot faster to just drag the scrollbar all 8 inches to the other end then zoom out, click, drag to close to the new spot, etc

[Omegalpha]

I think it's amazing how many people just blame the ability of others when in fact they should acknowledge that their tool needs improvement.

I am new to Labview but it's amazing how much improvement the interface needs.

regarding the Zoom function, it is very difficult to work on my laptop and then move the work to my desk and then to the lab as every monitor has a different size and resolution and the diagrams that look fine on one go beyond the screen on another.

Anyone from NI willing to do some work on the interface instead of blaming the users? 

[Ben]

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Omegalpha wrote:

I think it's amazing how many people just blame the ability of others when in fact they should acknowledge that their tool needs improvement.

I am new to Labview but it's amazing how much improvement the interface needs.

regarding the Zoom function, it is very difficult to work on my laptop and then move the work to my desk and then to the lab as every monitor has a different size and resolution and the diagrams that look fine on one go beyond the screen on another.

Anyone from NI willing to do some work on the interface instead of blaming the users? 

---

Hi Omegapha,

Size your diagram to fit nicely on your smallest screen.

THe screen size recomendations for LV are similar to the rules we learn for how long our sentances should be or how many words in a paragraph (Hermin Melville aside).

Sure you could write a book that is one sentance but it would be difficult to read and understand.

By learning how to exploit sub-VI you will decrease the diagram size and also become more productive (sub-VIs will act like "See paragraph 3 above").

So I encourage you to embrase the limitaion. You will become a better developer once you adapt.

Ben