Allow breaking up long wires with labels in each end

[jpa_]

In electrical schematics it is common to break up long wires with a label in each end. I wish this feature was available also in LabView.

The wire should still work in a data-flow way, unlike local variables. It should also be possible to have many connections to the same wire.

[tst]

Here's another example (from here😞

[Ray.R]

When I read this post, I first thought..  No!!!!  Hot something that will give people a chance to seriously **** up the block diagram.  Then I thought..  Well, what if they had labels at the open end.  I saw tst's example and yep..  That's what I was thinking of..

Suddently, I realized that people could implement something like a schematic I had to review recently, where the same labels were used throught the schematic for one of the hundreds (thousands) of signals.  There was no way of determining where the signal originated from because the source and all intermediate signal paths had the same labels.  Although a 1:1 relationship could be established, if a poor labelling approach is taken, then the block diagram becomes a h*** of a nightmare to figure out. 

Unless, LabVIEW would force unique label names..

[tst]

I agree that non-unique labels are a potential problem and that disallowing them might be correct.

I also agree that this isn't necessarily a good feature. As I said, I think this should be checked on a larger VI than the example I showed. Also, I feel the ghost wires idea should help.

[muks]

>>maybe clicking on these terminals would also display a dashed line representing the wire, so that you can look at it when you want, but it's not there most of the time

I think It can be given as anoption (the over all idea) and if given then tst's suggestion is a must have.

[Ray.R]

Hi tst,

Actually, I prefer your 3:13AM suggestion.  No dotted lines.

I can see that making complete sense and being (relatively easy?) possible to implement.  The DR> DT>  & >DR >DT could be special terminals.  I would put one restriction initially.  That is to limit it to a one-to-one relationship.  

A one-to-many relationship will make this behave like Local Variables.... And we all know how I feel about them.. 😉  

Kudos..

[tst]

I don't see why you need a one-to-one restriction. A wire can have one source and multiple sinks, so there's no reason a split wire can't have one source and multiple sinks. It would behave in exactly the same way. No race conditions and no problems other than readability.

As for the ghost wire, the concept was that it's a temporary display - you click on the terminal and the ghost wire shows up. You click something else and it disappears. It's a temporary guide to help you when editing or reading code. If people don't like it, it could be an option.

Unfortunately, with the number of kudos the idea received, it seems unlikely that NI would have to decide exactly how to implement this. 😉

[Ray.R]

Now I get it with the ghost wire..

When I posted my last reply, I had not seen the 2nd page.. 😞

I also understand what you mean by one-to-many relashionship being similar to wires.  I would have to fullyunderstand any limitations though.

Would you be able to have the other terminal appear within two or more structures at the same time?  While / For / Case/ etc.  Since the behavior would be the same as a wire, then it should.  Would a code loose sight of the dataflow because the wire is not visible? (hence the usefullness of the ghost wire)

It is certainly an interesting feature.  Maybe place some limitations at first just so that abuse does not become a common theme for a new feature.

[tst]

Technically, the wires on two sides of a tunnel are not the same wire, so the strict choice would be that a split wire can't go across a structure boundary. The source and sink(s) have to be in the same diagram. This is actually probably better, because even if this could be done without creating bugs, it would probably be too confusing.

[Ray.R]

Good... Yes... I agree with that one 😉

Wish I could give you Kudos...

[tst]

I was reminded of this and of Altenbach's image here:

so I figured I might take a couple of minutes and add something similar to the image I posted before, because I think that if this can be turned into a useful feature depends heavily on finding a good visual representation which makes it clear you're going "underground":

I don't particularly like any of the designs here, but it was only a quick attempt and it's possible that a better graphic or a more appropriate diagram might better showcase where this might be useful. For instance, I expect that this might be good for replacing wires running under structures.