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Vishal Devanath

Front Panel Cleanup and Automatic Connector Pane wiring

Status: New

This idea is an extension of the idea given here How about a Front Panel Cleanup?. We could have a more generic front panel clean up which doesn’t really worry about the connector pane patterns (and if needed automatically connects the connector pane as well)
Here is the idea->
Often while writing a VI we create controls and indicators from the block diagram itself rather than going to the FP and creating it. Also we copy Control and Indicator terminals from other VIs and type defs and directly drop it on the block diagram than the FP because BD is what we are usually working on. Once BD is complete we look at the FP just to make sure everything’s visible and is in a good shape. Often we find that many controls and indicators are missing from the view and are badly organized. It is painful to search for controls and move them into view. Instead an FP cleanup could put things into the visible space and organize them in a simple way (controls to the left, indicators to the right, similar controls and indicators on the same level, error cluster in the bottom etc). For most cases this might be sufficient. If not it could be used as a starting point to organize your FP. Also at the same time we could automatically connect these items to the connector pane as well. If you already have organized some items on your FP and you don’t want that to be disturbed, you could select such objects and exclude it from your FP clean up.
Example->
Let’s say you are working on a block diagram creating controls and copying some from other VIs.

working area.JPG

Now you look at the front panel and see all the controls and indicators scattered.

before 1.JPG

Also many of them are not even visible in the FP area.

before 2.JPG

Simple FP clean up with connector pane connection will put it into this state.

after 1.JPG

Note the connector pane as well. The user can either use the VI in its current state or use it as a starting point to organize his FP.

10 Comments
NitinD
NI Employee (retired)
I would also suggest an option to swap two controls' position... So you just select two objects and on right click, there is an option "swap location".
Bdev
NI Employee (retired)
I think we can have a button to cleanup the front panel similar to Block Diagram cleanup. 🙂
TiTou
Trusted Enthusiast

duplicate

 

And do you know about the subvi fixer? (google it)


We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Epictetus

Antoine Chalons

JackDunaway
Trusted Enthusiast
Well, it's not an exact duplicate of How About a Front Panel Cleanup?. This Idea suggests auto-wiring of the ConPane, the original did not. This idea is closer to a duplicate of tst's Create a proper connector pane when doing Edit -> Create subVI. Take tst's idea about creating subVI's, and put it's full functionality in a button that you can press on the FP of any subVI. Since it's not an exact duplicate, I don't mind a fresh take on old ideas, as long as the old ideas get reviewed again.
Vishal Devanath
NI Employee (retired)
Well, as I have mentioned, it's not a duplicate of How about a Front Panel Cleanup? but an extension to it. The previous idea was arranging the FP items according to the connector pane. There wasn't any logical cleanup of the FP. It was a blind arrangement of FP controls according to connecot pane. This idea is to have a logical clean up of the front panel and arranging the items on it, irrespective of connector pane. So the idea involves coming up with a logic to place the controls and indicators on FP. We could first wire the connector pane using this logic and then use How about a Front Panel Cleanup? to place the objects on FP.
JackDunaway
Trusted Enthusiast

Vishal Devanath wrote:

There wasn't any logical cleanup of the FP. It was a blind arrangement of FP controls according to connecot pane. This idea is to have a logical clean up of the front panel and arranging the items on it, irrespective of connector pane.


Blind? It seems logical for the FP object locations to be slave to the connecter pane, not object location driving connector pane layout. It's necessary to develop the connecter pane, else the parent VI hosting all the SubVI's will lack coherence.

 

I really like half of this idea: if the connector pane is completely unwired and the FP objects are scattered all over the place (like your example), a click of the button would center the FP on the origin and bring all the FP objects into "approximate order" grouped by type (refs on top, errors on bottom, controls on right, indicators on left...). You want the connector pane automatically wired, but I'm hesitant to agree with that for my reason above.

 

But, since The ability to move or switch items in the connector pane is In Beta, I'll say "yes, go ahead and wire the connector pane". I would guess that "typically" the auto-wired pane is going to require minimal swapping, but it will undoubtedly require a little maintenance.

AnandKod
NI Employee (retired)

Also, i think, having 'selective' auto-connect to connector pane is useful.

User can select a set of controls and indicators and make auto connections out those. ( Only selected items will be part of the connector pane )

beuvink
Member

I posted something that was similar as I was not able to see this. I think this is an improvement of my post. But I would like to promote to only use the 4-2-2-4 connector pane with reservation for errors.

My reasoning:

- Changing a connector pane in a later stage will cause you to rewire all your callers (which could introduce bugs)

- When using a connector pane that has less connection nodes it is likely that you end up changing the connector pane as you require another input/output

- All connector panes that have more connection nodes result in a dirty caller vi. (to many lines get cluttered). If more inputs are really needed, stuff should be clustered (also cannot by done by wrong in legacy caller vi's)

- It is very common to add error lines to a vi. Even when this is not done at first, you may end up doing this in a later stage for timing reasons.

 

I also think it is a good idea to tell the clean-up function which items to connect to the control pane/where to place the controls on the FP. This could be by selecting them, but also by placing them in the BD at the edges (e.g. drag the controls to the left, the indicators to the right. I think it is good style to place the items on the BD roughly in the same place as the FP anyway.

 

(my post with some extra info http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Automaticly-wire-connection-pane-for-newly-created-VI-...

 

---

25+ years long fan of LabVIEW. Be aware that NI changed their business model with great impact .
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

FYI, the kind of "not blind" arranging of the front panel that I think Vishal is requesting is exactly what we added into Create SubVI From Selection in LV 2011. When we create the subVI, we use the types of the controls to choose the layout of the conpane rather than the other way around. That means error controls move to the bottom, controls to the left, indicators to the right and classes/refnums to the top.

 

Instead of limiting to the 4x2x2x4, I would say we should use 4x2x2x4 OR the conpane that the user has specified in their config file -- that's exactly what we do for New VI and for Create SubVI.

Timmar
Active Participant

Got my Vote!

 

I use object oriented coding a lot, I would like to see it auto-detect if a class is present, inherit the class's icon template and map the terminals......

 

and yes, 4,2,2,4 or even throwing a dialog to select the type would be cool as well.

iTm - Senior Systems Engineer
uses: LABVIEW 2012 SP1 x86 on Windows 7 x64. cFP, cRIO, PXI-RT