NI TestStand Idea Exchange

It isn't uncommon to deploy customized TestStand options, such as search directories, on a deployment computer.  It would be much easier to do this if the search directories in TestStand were stored in their own .ini file rather than in TestExec.ini.  You can obviously set the search directories in TestExec.ini quickly using the built-in search directories GUI, but when distributing the TestExec.ini file to the deployment computer, you have to be careful that none of the other options contained in the file don't inadvertently cause problems when executing TestStand deployments.  A separate .ini file for search directories would clearly remedy this situation.

The settings field can easily become too long to see every active option and there's not necesarily any consistency between steps if they have differing options. What I mean by that is if you only set the "Do Not Record Result" (my favorite) option in one step, it will be on the left of the settings field. But if you now set several options on another step, the settings are not lined up so that it becomes hard to see at a quick glance which steps I forgot to not record (because TS still doesn't default to not recording steps). You have to analyze the settings line for each step.

I propose something more graphical and ordered. Here's my idea of at least ordered. The text could be replaced with icons representing each setting.

Then it would be graphical, ordered, and concise. What more can you ask for?

Currently, the only way to pass parameters from a subsequence to a caller is by reference.  It would be nice if you could also pass parameters to callers by value to prevent the callers from modifying them.

When creating custom step types, it is highly recommended to use Post-Step for calling execution module instead of Default Module.

Thus, when instanciating a custom step type, parameters passing is not saved within the sequence but only in the step type definition.

This allows to change parameters passing without having to update all the step types instances.

In some big test benches, it is intersesting to have low-level step types and high step types based on low level step types.

High level step types execution modules are sequences using low level step types.

Since sequence adapter is not available for Post-Step, we are obliged to call the sequence through Default Module.

Thus it can generate problems when adding parameters in sequence call.

I suggess to allow Sequence Call in SubStep creation :

Jean-Louis Schricke, MESULOG

TestStand Architect

When using the TestStand API, I always find myself switching back and forth between TestStand and the TestStand reference help.  While the intellisense function help is usually enough, many times I like seeing the more detailed information in the help.  I would really like to have the option of displaying context specific help in a TestStand pane, similar to the context help window in LabVIEW.

This pane could dynamically update to display function information when using expressions, or show general information about the active pane or dialog (for newer users).  Much of the linking for the second case is already done, since the F1 key will pull up relevant help for the active pane currently.

Often working with Full Featured UI and Simple UI codes to create custom interfaces for TS, I noticed that the versions shipped with LV2012 are full of deprecated functions.

Also, most of their implementation go against good LV coding rules.

Re-writing them could be a great idea !

Using the stock reportgen_xml.seq file, the text value of the XML node shouldn't contain the characters < or >:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#syntax

When using LabVIEW VI's to parse this, you (rightly) get errors, so it's incredibly difficult to just search and replace the offending characters with their XML escapes. 

Example node contents from the XML report:

<Prop Name='ReportText' Type='String' Flags='0x400000'>
                            <Value><![CDATA[{0} Locals.i = 0; Locals.i < 2; Locals.i += 1]]></Value>
                        </Prop>

I think that this simple change to the sequence file callbacks dialog would make it far more simple and intuitive.

new:

current:

Often times a sequence file ends up containing dozens (or even hundreds) of sequences.  Currently they all show up in the sequence editor Sequence Window as a flat list.  It sure would be nice to view them organized in folders so that, for instance, all my sequences dealing with Rs485 communications or whatever could be group together in a "folder" called "RS485".  Also it would be great if there was a displayable property for each sequence showing the date/time last modified.  Then you could sort the list on that and see which sequences have changed. (really helpful if you have multiple guys who might be making changes.)

When monitoring values within a loop in TestStand, it is often desired to only record step failure results.  It would be useful to have a "Result Recording Option" of "Enabled On Step Failure":

This is possible through various means (SequenceFilePostResultListEntry callbacks and other custom code).  However, I believe this would simplify TestStand sequence development significantly.

I think it would be a great idea to allow the sequence adapter to expand containers like the CVI and LabVIEW adapters do when you are editing the module for the step. 

See attachment.

The Sequence File Documentation Tool allows you to create documentation in the file formats HTML and text.

It would be nice if it could also create XML based documentation similar to report generation. Selecting a style sheet will ensure that the XML file is presented in a certain way using a browser.

Norbert

Right now, custom substeps (edit substep in particular) only supports one step at a time.  (I can only invoke the edit substep if exactly one step is selected).  However, I have a case where I have a dozen or more steps in a row that are all the same custom step type, and I want to perform the custom edit event on all of them.  This means going through each one individually, which takes a while.  I'd love to be able to select all of them, and then invoke the edit substep call for all of them at once.  The "cheap" way to do this would be to just invoke the edit substep of the first one, and then once that is done to go to the next, and the next, and finally you are done (but this is still annoying to the user).  What would be nice is to be able to pass an array of sequence context values in (one for each step that is selected), and then your edit code could manage all of the steps however it sees fit.  If multiple different step types are selected, it could just default to not allowing a multi-step custom edit, but ideally if all of the steps selected shared a common edit substep entry (name and module) it would allow it.

The menu to create a new variable (right click on variable in an expression edit control and select Create "VariableName") contains all the data types you can use for the variable, however, in the LabVIEW Panel (and other similar panels or dialogs) there is enough context information about the variable to suggest a data type, for example, if the variable is in a control of type Double we know we should create a Numeric variable. TestStand should add the contextual suggestions to the top of the context menu and bold them so that I can more quickly select the data type I want most of the times, then have a separator and put the normal menu so if I don't want that data type for some reason I can still choose the other data types (see attached image).

Why not make it possible for Teststand to generate reports in PDF format?

It would make it a lot easier to send a testreport of a specific board to people not connected to the actual tester.

Today we use XML but this requires the stylesheet to be present on the readers pc.

Graphs are also not showing correct unless you do a manual setup of the settings in Internet Explore.

PDF would make my life a lot simpler

/Michael

I would like to enhance the TestStand Message Box step to add a 'Preview' button.  When selected, it would show how the currently configured message box will look when run.

I find that I am often switching around the text, fonts, and other aspects and would like to get that straightened out before run time.  I know you can run the step individually by selecting 'Run Selected Step' but that is tedious, plus you have to take into account preconditions and other functionality.  Normally, I have to remove the precondition (if there is one) as often the step cannot be run by itself.

So here is my example with the button added.  Not exactly sure what tab it would belong on.

Thanks,

Paul

Do you ever write an expression in TestStand with a bunch of parenthesis () and get lost halfway through trying to figure out which pairs are open and which are closed.  Well, I do.  Every Day.  And I spend accumulated hours a week just trying to keep track of which ) goes with which (.  If I'm lucky I can look for a little red item in the expression, or click on the check expression checkbox, but when I have a 'only runtime evaluatable' expression I'm out of luck (which is rather often) ).  Some languages/editors have a parenthesis matching, where the ) your cursor is on causes the matching ( to get bold or flash.  Others start coloring each pair a different color, so it's easy to see them all.  Why can't TestStand do something like this????

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.

The built-in Wait step currently causes TestStand to simply stop at that step until the specified period has elapsed. For steps longer than a few seconds, it would be nice to have some sort of indicator to show how much time is left to wait (and to show that the computer hasn't locked up on those waits that are more than 15 seconds).

It would be really nice to have a check box option to show some sort of wait indicator, even if it was simply using the progress indicator in the lower right corner of the screen (something that simple could even just always be enabled).

On a related note, could the progress bar be made wider so that there is more resolution as to how much progress has been made? If there was a ten minute wait for something, the bar would be moving very slowly and hard to tell progression was being made.