Ability to change default color / style of block diagram objects

[RnDMonkey]

As far as I can locate, this hasn't been posted on Idea Exchange yet.

What I'd like to be able to do is change the default colors and visibility of various components of block diagram items. For example, I might want to color the background and sub label of my timed looped structures so that they improve the appearance of my code, like NI has done in the Bioreactor example code with a free label and custom colors.

Rather than setting these colors/font sizes/label visibilities for each structure I place, I'd like to be able to set them only once. Currently, the sub labels' default visibility CAN be set in tools»options, but not the coloring.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

We actually discussed this when working on the sublabel feature for 2012. We're not sure this is a good idea. The readability of diagrams depends largely upon diagram elements being recognizable no matter who wrote the diagram. Selective use of color to call out key elements in a VI helps readability. Everything shifting to a different color scheme hurts readability.

If you pick some colors, would you'd want those colors to stick when the VI was loaded on someone else's machine? If you changed your colors, would you want that to recolor all existing diagrams? Saying "yes" to either of these conflicts with use of color to indicate particular aspects of the diagram (like having a specific color for any while loop that is a state chart, for example).

I'd like to hear opinions from more of the LV community.

[PaulG.]

Color is already abused too much. I'm nervous with the new colors for structures. Don't give us any more ideas. 

[RnDMonkey]

Please keep in mind that I'm not asking for the ability to do anything that can't be done currently. Also, as you can see in the picture I attached, somebody at NI obviously thought that a different color scheme was a good idea because they went ahead and changed it from the defaults and I have seen this new style repeatedly in NI code this year. All I am suggesting is that we be allowed to set default appearances for newly placed items to the same extent that we can modify them, one at a time, after placing them on the BD.

I would submit that these be akin to preferences on the user's machine, and would apply when placing new elements; never modifying existing ones. This is exactly like the current preferences for label visibility and position: it affects how things look when (and only when) you create them. So yes, I'd like them to stick when loaded on somebody elses machine, just as if I used the color tool and modified them manually, one at a time. If I changed my colors, I would not want anything to be reconfigured because this is a default creation setting, not a display setting.

Again, this would not do anything more than what could be manually done, but would simply save the trouble of doing it repeatedly. It doesn't give the programmer the ability to make unreadable BD code, it just let's him do it en masse.

[fabric]

We have one developer who always colours his structures... One side effect of this is that we can always tell which parts of the project he has been working on!

<joke>Why not assign a different colour to each developer?<\joke>

[X.]

Just put your favorite design in the Favs palette...

[johnsold]

As one who is color blind, I find suggestions like this quite scary.  Some of the default colors are bad enough.  Adding more or allowing drastic changes across a diagram might make it unusable.  In the Command Parser loop above the boolean wires are quite hard for me to see.  Do not ask me to to work on a diagram which looks like that!

Even coloring labels can make the text hard to read. Black text in a red background is very nasty.

I no longer object to LV using color on the BD, but please do not make it too easy for someone to create illegible diagrams by poor color choices.

Lynn

[RnDMonkey]

johnsold,

That's basically asking for NI to protect users from their own stupidity. There is some value in that, but I don't think it's right to stop one user from working the way they want because another user will work poorly.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

There's a big difference between coloring particular structues -- like highlighting important ones in a shipping example -- and changing the default scheme.

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 6 kudos within 6 years after posting will be automatically declined.