Cleaner "Wire All Terminals" Placement (Ctrl-Space - Ctrl D)

[David_L]

The "Wire All Terminals" feature (pressing Ctrl-Space, Ctrl D) is such an awesome feature for quickly adding controls and indicators to a subVI.  However the current implementation makes a spaghetti bowl on the block diagram, as well as a unintuitive collection of controls on the front panel.

 

I propose having this feature place the terminals in a cleaner, more organized way, and to logically organize the front panel controls as well.  It could even take the FP placement from the actual subVI, since most (hopefully) already have them in a nice layout to begin with...

 

[dthor]

I never use the feature, and I think it's because of this reason. So kudos!

[Darren]

When I first wrote the feature, I tried to do a selective diagram cleanup of the created nodes after creation.  I ran into a snag, though...but I don't remember what it was.  Probably something to do with the Undo transaction if I had to guess.  Anyway, I'll try to find some time to revisit this idea in an upcoming release.  In the meantime, it only takes an extra couple of seconds to lasso the created objects and the node and press Ctrl-U to clean up the selection.  That will solve the diagram problem at least.

[David_L]

Thanks for the insight Darren.  Of course there's a fairly simple workaround, I just thought this would help to save a couple extra steps, as this feature is one I use many times a day.

[Darin.K]

You know that the 'Create Control/Indicator/Constant' is wonky when Block Diagram Cleanup is actually a huge improvement.

I gave up on this shortcut in LV9 and rolled my own limited version.  I limited it to Functions and SubVIs and ran a selective cleanup after the fact.  No issue with the Undo transaction, but the original Node is moved which I found annoying.  It took a pile of code to fix that in LV9, but LV10+ has the 'Move Selected Objects' method so that should be easy to remedy.

The snag I envision is unleashing the Block Diagram Cleanup on other Nodes and FSS, the results could be quite uncool.  I'd suggest limiting the scope of objects handled, but handling those very well.