NI TestStand Idea Exchange

It is common to want to place a shortcut to a TestStand User Interface or even a TestStand sequence file on the Windows Desktop for each user of a computer.  This is done by placing a shortcut in the Windows All Users Desktop directory.  Currently, the TestStand Deployment Utility only allows you to create a shortcut on the current user's Desktop.  It would be really nice if the TestStand Deployment Utility allowed you to also create shortcuts on the Windows All Users Desktop so that everyone using the computer could see this shortcut on his or her Desktop.

It would be great to have the ability to create an independent TestStand configuration that is valid in a workspace context. That would allow project specific search directories, StationGlobals an several other configuration items you normally don't want to share across projects on the same test station.

Currently, to export properties which are part of an array, such as the limits of a multiple numeric limit test, you have to specify each index of the array separately, like in the first screen shot, or else you get all of the raw XML, which is difficult to interpret and use. 

This is both labor intensive and unituitive. . If instead we had the option to export the array with the "?" and have it parse the information out like in picture 1, it would be much simpler to use.

Regards,

Kyle Mozdzyn

Applications Engineering

National Instruments 

I know that I can deploy station globals by adding the ini file to my workspace but when deploying them I want the Station Globals to be merged with the existing station globals on the deployed machine.  Please add this as a feature to the deploy utility.

Currently, the Installation Destionation options are as follows: 

There is no way to install files to the root directory, or its subdirectories, with the exception of those already present in the Installation Destination. For instance, make it possible to install a file to the following directory: C:\ProgramData\IVI Foundation\IVI

I have seen multiple customers who have encounter the following error:

Error: The following VIs or Project Libraries have duplicate names
You must change the names or add them to project libraries:

The issue sources from installing a TS deployment onto your development machine. It is not recommended.  And though the deployment will be able to execute, it can also cause undesired linking errors, as shown in these cases. As a result, some of the VIs called are looking to SupportVIs (even in your development sequence), and other VIs called are looking for the same named VI in vi.lib. There can't be two different VIs with the same name, unless they are in two different libraries.

I suggest that we implement a warning when such an installation is started or even an error which prohibits installation fo the deployment.

See Also

Simulated Devices in LabVIEW projects

Project and Workspace Context in MAX

Link to those ideas in next post

We can already create tasks, channels and scales in a LabVIEW project but, We cannot then use MAX to run those Tasks and we must use MAX to create a simulated device on a development machine.  After a few projects the Max configuration becomes cluttered.  Deployment and importing of the hardware configuration can get problematic to say the least! 

On the other hand- if the Hardware, Data neighborhood and IVI session set-ups could be added to the workspace, deployment would be a snap! just import the *.nce from the workspace without having to create one from MAX and exclude items not concerned for the deployment.

For integration and station troubleshooting the Sessions, Aliases, Tasks et al would be organized by deployment in MAX and fault identification has all the "tools" any repair tech could want to isolate a failure.

I use the Stationglobals.ini to define my hardware settings on the test PC, like comport number and so on. It is running Teststand Base Deployment.

If I want to edit the settings it's only possible if I copy the stationglobals.ini to my development PC which has the full license, edits the settings, and then copies the file back to the test PC. Before I copy the file to my development PC I need to make a backup of the original file, so I don't get the settings on the development PC overwritten. Then afterwards I have to re-establish the backup.

This is a lot of copying back and forth, which is quite annoying.

Please make it possible to edit the Stationglobals.ini directly on the test PC with the Base Deployment Engine.

It would be a big convenience if, when you are configuring a TestStand Deployment, the Workspace automatically populated with the current workspace that was open when you try to deploy.  While not a major inconvenience, it is somewhat of a hassle to go and select the same file every time, especially if you are making small changes to test a system.

Even though we already have an About box for TestStand, it would also be nice to have one for the active TestSequence file as well. The Help menu would have a new item called "About MySequenceFile ...".

MySequenceFile About box splash screen:

The information in this screen should be loaded directly from a single FileGlobal string whenever a sequence file is made active. This can probably be done already by those that know how, but it should be already part of TestStand by default.

Eugene