application builder icon editor: way to paste clipboard figures?

[_Faust]

I've never used the icon editor yet from the application builder menu (when I create a new build in the project explorer).

I noticed it can only open *.ico files. I cannot paste images and I have to draw every icon by hand. I was wondering if there is an easy solution -maybe a newer version of Labview?- Using8.6 now

thanks

Message Edited by _Faust on 05-14-2010 04:15 PM

[GregFreeman · Accepted solution]

Use IcoFX. It's free online and you can download it. Then use that program to convert your image file to an icon file.

Message Edited by for(imstuck) on 05-14-2010 04:19 PM

[_Faust]

I'd give you 20 kudos for this. I could make ALL icons (256x256 up to 16x16) within 3 minutes from a high res picture. Easy, and the quality is great. Thank you so much!

Could import in Labview without any problem

[GregFreeman]

Glad to help. It would be nice if you could just put a .bmp or .png or some other image file. But such is life. I'm not sure why it has to be an .ico in terms of how LabVIEW handles it and it wont take any other image file, but either way I'm sure this is not high on NIs priority list for things to change :). Someone may be able to further comment on this or give a better answer, but I'm glad you got it working.

[rolfk]

---

for(imstuck) wrote:
Glad to help. It would be nice if you could just put a .bmp or .png or some other image file. But such is life. I'm not sure why it has to be an .ico in terms of how LabVIEW handles it and it wont take any other image file, but either way I'm sure this is not high on NIs priority list for things to change :). Someone may be able to further comment on this or give a better answer, but I'm glad you got it working.

---

The why is simple. It only implements routines to read ICO files. Someone sometime ago wrote those quite likely in his spare time, and they made it into the LabVIEW distribution and were then used by the new icon editor too. Since LabVIEW also has BMP routines in its vi.lib it would be simple to add that capability to the icon editor too, since it is open source. However there is a technical problem since icons have multiple different resolutions and bit depths combined in one file, wheras BMP is a single resolution, single bit depth format per file.

Message Edited by rolfk on 05-16-2010 10:38 AM

[tst]

Rolf, they're refering to app builder icon editor, which I believe comes directly from CVI and isn't very advanced, presumably because it was written quite some time ago and NI didn't put too much effort into it. As mentioned, IcoFX is both good and free, so problem solved.

[rolfk]

Ohhh that one! I never used that at all but always used directly applications like Micro Angelo to do icon editing. Haven't tried IconFX yet.