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In order to logically sort sequences within a sequence file, you have to add either a prefix to your sequence names or add dummy sequences between sequence groups:
What would be great is if I could could add sequence groups which let me organize my sequences logically in a tree view. Unfortunately, I can't shoop my vision of that at the moment.
I have noticed that the TestStand shipping examples are often overlooked when looking for ways to accomplish things with TestStand. This is not the case (as much) in LabVIEW and CVI, and I feel that this is because TestStand does not have an example finder. I would like to see some method of accessing the shipping examples through the sequence editor environment, such as:
Another problem with the current setup is that the only way to know what the example demonstrates is the name of the folder. This makes it easy to overlook examples that would be helpful.
I propose adding a TestStand example finder with these features (in order of importance):
- Provide a description for each example (most of this info can be pulled from the sequenceFileLoad callback dialogs in a lot of the examples)
- have keywords for the examples, and allow searching
- for more advanced examples, provide a batch file to load all necessary components
- Provide links to the NI community and developer zone to encourage participation
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
Do you ever have too many custom data types, and it looks something like this
This just really sucks when you have 100's of data types to go through. My list is currently 150 long. That's a lot of clicking on that little arrow at the bottom.
How about something like this:
Go through and reorganize your types
<< insert some whiz-bang graphical editor here that allows dragging/dropping of types into groups -- none of this "move up in list" "move down in list" stuff that we are doing now to move step types in/out of groups >>
Now when you go to insert a type, you see a tree structure and all your types are organized
This would be so much easier to find the type I want.
How many times have you found yourself typing double backslashes "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe" or even worse, going through a copied path to change every backslash to a double backslash (and inevitably missing one), just so you can pass a file or directory as a constant to a code module or another sequence?
I'd like to see a symbol for 'explicit string' in the TestStand expression language, much like C# does with the @ symbol.
So if we typed @"C:\windows\temp" we would actually get the string "C:\Windows\temp" instead of "C:\Windows<tab>emp".
To really go the extra mile on this:
- Drag and drop could be enabled, so that any file dragged from another window into an expression box would automatically paste the filename.
- A browse button could be added to the expression browse dialog which would bring up the usual file open dialog and insert the selected filename.
Recently ran into a problem when I was configuring a LabVIEW module that passed in/out clusters/types. I had a mistake in my code that the teststand data type was not configured to allow it to pass to LabVIEW clusters, but the problem was not as obvious as I thought it should be.
Here's what I had:
And when I click on the red checkmark "check expression" for "Cluster", it shows up as "No Errors". Everything looks great, right? Well, it isn't.
It's not until I expand "Cluster" to show the elements that I see that there are connectivity problems.
It would be nice if "Locals.mylocal" expression would turn RED and show a "check expression error" if any of it's children also had a connection problem (specifically in this case that the type in TestStand was not configured to allow passing to LabVIEW clusters). This way it would be a lot easier to see.
Even worse, this problem is NOT found by sequence analyzer -- it's left to be found at runtime.
I know this is all because I had a bug/mistake in my code, but it would be a lot easier to track down and fix if these changes were made.
It would be nice to integrate VeriStand into TestStand with a VeriStand Adapter.
This would make developing with TestStand and VeriStand much easier. The adapter would provide a lot of the VeriStand .Net api natively to testand:
- Deploy a system
- Set/Get Channel(s)
- Stimulus Profiles
- etc.
The adapter would be especially nice for integrating the new Stimulus Profiles in VeriStand 2011. It would allow for you to create the Stimulus Profile sequence and the Real-Time sequence. The Real-Time sequences would only be able to use a subset of TestStand steps, and would have to be different than a normal TestStand sequence because they are executed by the VeriStand engine, but the Stimulus Profile sequence could be a normal TestStand sequence.
The integration of the Stimulus Profiles would leverage a lot of features TestStand already has like source control, requirements, reporting, etc. Also, it would just give the user a much more intuitive experience when using the two together. Their test development would be centralized in TestStand instead of having to switch between the two different editors. It would also give better access to the parameters being passed into the Real-Time sequences at the TestStand level.
There are probably more benefits that could be realized by integrating TestStand and VeriStand, and this is a feature I would love to see as a user of both TestStand and VeriStand.
You can copy the value of a selected variable to another element.
But you cannot paste the value into the selected element in an easy manner.
What you have to do is click into the selected variable’s value field and then Paste, but this doesn’t produce the correct result (for strings anyway)......
You end up with is double quotes!!!
Also if you had ‘Copy Value’ on multiple selected elements and pasted them then you get
So it cannot handle multiple selections.
It would have been better if you could have selected the place where you wanted to paste the value(s) and a new menu item became available ie ‘Paste Value’.
This way should also be able to handle multiple selections.
The problem with double quotes shouldn’t occur and should be corrected with the current pasting of values.
Currently, if you create a step type and name it OnNewStep, it will execute when an instance of the step is created. This is pretty confusing to new users - why don't we just have an OnNewStep substep type (like prestep, edit, etc)? Custom steps would then just be meant to be called manually using the Step.ExecuteSubstep() Method as documented in the help.
We could keep the "onNewStep" custom step functionality to maintain backwards compatibility with older step types.
Do you have a feature idea for how to improve NI TestStand? Submit and vote on ideas now!- Browse by label or search in the TestStand Idea Exchange to see if your idea has previously been submitted. If your idea exists sure to vote for the idea by giving it kudos to indicate your approval!
- If your idea has not been submitted click
Post New Idea to submit a product idea. Be sure to submit a separate post for each idea. Note: the TestStand Idea Exchange is not the appropriate forum to submit technical support questions. - Watch as the community gives your idea kudos and adds their input.
- As NI R&D considers the idea, they will change the idea status.
- Give kudos to other ideas that you would like to see implemented!
The TestStand R&D team is committed to reviewing every idea submitted via the TestStand Idea Exchange. However, we cannot guarantee the implementation of any TestStand Idea Exchange submission until further documented.
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