Highlight the Entire Wire with Key or Click Combination

[Pie56694]

I would like a key or click combination to highlight the entire wire.  Structure borders are brick walls for the highlight feature, so you must follow the wire to the structure, then double-click the other side of the tunnel in order to continue tracing the data flow.

For example, if I double click to the right of the While Loop, I get this:

What I want to get is this:

What do you all do when you're tracing wires through structures? 

[JackDunaway]

Triple click does what you want minus going through tunnels. Quadruple click, maybe?

[Pie56694]

Yea, it's the tunnel thing that's bugging me.  I tried quadruple click and a few key-click combinations.  I think LabVIEW implements a sub diagram at every tunnel so it's not an easy thing to get, i.e. we'd have to make this an editor feature and traverse the data-flow rather than simply trace the wire.

[RavensFan]

I don't think it would be a good idea to go past the triple click.  The wire on the other side of the tunnel is technically a different wire.  And if you were dealing with a case structure, it would be multiple different wires in the different cases.  Too much of a risk that you wind up screwing up multiple subdiagrams when you are only intending to screw up one.

[smercurio_fc]

With tunnels it could also be a different datatype alltogether. Th. Autoindexing...  (Though saying it's a different wire pretty much amounts to the same thing)

[Pie56694]

I agree with you both, shape and type and caveats and all.  I'd still like an editor feature to show me where the wire goes from endpoint to endpoint, traversing tunnels, structures, and down each branch.  I leave it to the developer to understand the implications of each traverse.  You're confirming that it's probably not easy to implement, but I don't see why it shouldn't be implemented.

[smercurio_fc]

So if I understand correctly, you want LabVIEW to be able to show you the full trace of the wire (traversing any possible changes in datatypes), but disallow you from actually doing anything, like deleting it, which would cause all sorts of problems, as Ravens Fan alluded to?

[Pie56694]

Exactamundo.  If I'm reviewing a large and complex diagram, and I shift-click a wire and I see the full trace, I can recommend better architectures depending on where the wire goes, how it changes along the way, what's the source and what are the sinks.

[paulmw]

Sound kind of like selecting a net in a gerber file or PCB editing tool and seing where and what layers the traces run for the whole net...

[GregSands]

Doesn't make sense to me.  What if the structure was a Case Structure which had multiple sources of an output?  Or do you trace back through a Select node?  What about Unbundle or Index Array?  Just to mention a few examples where "connected" wires contain (in some sense) the same data as where you click.

[muks]

I think the idea is interesting. When there are multiple hidden structures this might show up chaotic but still will be intresting.. I am kudoing it.