Graph of Multiple Numeric Result displaying measurements and upper and lower limits

[BrianM]

Is there a way with your graph control to show all the measured values against upper and lower limits in the same graph?. I can display individual lines, but would like to show all the data on the one graph. The woefully cryptic help files you provide with the graph control in TestStand seriously needs attention (Give examples!) also axis labelling, how is that achieved?

[chiara.a]

Hi Brian, 

To be honest, the best way of creating those kinds of custom indicators in TestStand is to use code modules in other languages to import images.  

For example, the way to do this from LabVIEW can be found here: http://www.ni.com/example/30736/en/

I know this doesn't really answer your question directly, but unfortunately I'm having some difficulties in finding direct ways inside TestStand to do the kind of things that you would like.

Let me know if this helps or if there's anything more I can do, 

Best wishes,

[BrianM]

Thanks Chiara,

I was just hoping for a simple solution. (Thought I was missing something with the graph control)

Graphing a waveform with its limits would be a very useful feature in the test report. (Maybe a feature request?) Unfortunately the ATML or XML reports are quite problematic when dealing with external languages when the schemas & stylesheets are pre-defined.

Perhaps NI can create a new 'Picture To Report' step type (or integrate 'Picture To Report'  as part of the 'Additional Results' step?)

Regards,

Brian

[chiara.a]

Hi, 

I agree, it'd probably be very useful!  But I'm afraid that the best I can really do is recommend that you put in a feature request on the TestStand ideas exchange - if enough people Kudos it might be pushed up the development ladder.

Sorry I can't be more help on this one!

Best, 

[Daniel-E]

Hey Brian,

I'm not sure I understand what you're wanting to see with the data plotted on the graph--would it be possible for you to show us an example, even if it's just a drawn mockup of what the graph would look like? I'd like to look into it a bit and confirm that there is not a way to display the data.

Also, could you provide a bit of detail about the problems you've run into with using external languages with the ATML and XML reports? I'd like to understand that issue a bit better as well to determine how we could address it.

One thing you might be interested in is that we can currently embed images in the report by inserting HTML code linking to the image. I've seen cases where a LabVIEW VI plotted some data onto a custom graph, saved a picture of the control, and linked the image into the report. Here is a KnowledgeBase article which describes how the linking process works: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/D98A271E30431C9D86256C230079843A?OpenDocument

I'll look forward to your reply about what you're hoping to see, and perhaps we can think of the best way to accomplish it with the reporting mechanism in TestStand. As Chiara mentioned, if there are features you would like to see that are not currently possible with our reports, the Idea Exchange will be a great place to post that. 

Thanks!

[BrianM]

Daniel-E,

                 Attached is a simple graph example showing what I'd like to do. The limits are the green and blue lines, the red line is the actual measurements. All results from one Multiple Numeric Limit test.

                 With the ATML and XML it was always a problem allowing TPS developers to put text where they wanted (and formatted in the way they wanted) in the report. (Mainly due to the browser stripping out extra spaces.)

                One big bug-bear of mine is why you insist on recording EVERYTHING in the reports by default. Do you REALLY need to record the End of an IF statement? I believe Record Results should be the default on the Test steps ONLY! On ALL other step types it should be disabled.  I created a sequence to scan all sequence files to do this automatically to get round this, but I think it should be the norm.(It would certainly tidy up the test reports.)

     Regards,

                      Brian

[Daniel-E]

Hey Brian,

Thanks for the graph mock-up. I'll take a look at that soon and see what I can come up with as far as showing this in a TestStand report.

As far as recording results in the report, this is primarily the purpose of the Result Filtering Expression found in the report options. We provide a few default settings, such as "Exclude Flow Control", which will not display any flow control steps in the report. Another common selection used by customers is "Exclude Passed/Done/Skipped" which will generate a report that only shows failures of test steps. However, you can write custom expressions as well, and can filter steps based on any criteria. For example, you could exclude all steps with a Done status, which would remove all Action steps, Flow Control steps, and any other step with that status. 

The reason we provide this functionality in the report settings is allow you to easily configure which data appears in the report from one screen instead of by changing settings throughout the sequence. Additionally, with the model plugins used in TestStand 2012 and later, you can easily generate multiple reports. In that case, the filtering expression could be very useful to generate a simple report of only passed or failed results, as well as a more detailed report with information about every test step.

Hope it helps! As I said, I will look at the graph and determine whether we can do this with the built-in graphing functionality of TestStand.

[BrianM]

Thanks Daniel,

           That's very useful to know! I haven't really used the Report Options recently since a lot of the Projects I have been working on used an ATML Process Model defined by myself  8 years ago. (of which I ignored most of the Report options...) Recently, however, we have gone back to the NI generated Process Models since you are more up to date with the ATML specification than my version. (although why is the filtering expression greyed out for XML files and not the other report formats?)

          Your help is much appreciated!

          Brian

[BrianM]

Daniel,

          I gave the filtering a shot and it does work, much neater reports.

          However....

          I created a test sequence 3 lines/steps a For loop around a multiple numeric test and set the loop to be 10000 times.

          The Program was run and a test report was generated. It looked clean with no extra info for the For Loop and End statement. (great)

          Unfortunately the Number of Results is displayed as 30000 instead of 10000. It only displays 10000 if I disable the results recording on the For Loop steps.

          So the Test report is counting the For and End steps in the Number of Results 

          Surely it shouldn't, or am I missing something?

          Regards,

                       Brian