LabVIEW Viewer

[Kezar]

The LabVIEW Viewer would be a stand-alone application that allows for the viewing on VIs for someone who doesn't have a full-blown LabVIEW installation.  It would function similar to how the development environment functions on a 'locked' VI.

I've used 'VI Documentation' in the past, but this viewer would allow for live navigation, context help, drilling-down into SubVIs, scrolling through case structures, etc.

[Dennis_Knutson]

There used to be a viewer around the LabVIEW 6 time frame. I don't believe it was used much and  only lasted for a couple of releases. Since anyone who would be reviewing LabVIEW code would have to be knowledgeable about LabVIEW and hence use it and have it installed, there were probably few reasons to maintain it. Where would you forsee this being used?

[Kezar]

For the most part, I would like the viewer for propagation of LabVIEW within my company.  As of now, only a few people can interact with LabVIEW code.  A viewer would anyone to get comfortable with code and better understand it’s potential. 

I could also see it being used for code reviews and for TestStand installations, but these are secondary motivations for me.

[Jim_Kring]

Sounds like the LabVIEW Player

[muks]

I wanted to suggest this in this exchange and this came up while searching.Also the viewer should have the ability to open any labVIEW version. Really helpful for people like me who are still stuck with 8.0.....

But with only a couple of kudos I doubt whether this will get implemented...

[dgoadjr]

I added this idea after searching and not getting a hit on the viewer idea.  However, I think it should also work with email.  Email or receive an email with an attached VI and one should be able to click on it and see the VI regardless of the version that the VI was written with.  Maybe even a mobile app to open and look at a VI on the smart phones we have today.  The

Idea does not seem too well received.  I guess their are only a few of us that need to drag laptops around to every meeting and design review so others can see the Visa.  Most folks that attend these meetings don't have LabVIEW installed on their computers and none of the conference room that I use do either.  This could be a big thing.  It could also be hard to do. 

[B.Settles]

So, I had a similar idea for a code view, but my reasoning is not to expose LabVIEW code to non-LabVIEW users or for code reviews.

My reasoning is based on being able to view examples and code from new versions of LabVIEW in older versions. I understand that some of the code isn't backwards compatible, but that would be limited to newer features that are still being refined and would only be a subset. I just want to be able to look at the code without requesting the person who posted the time to take additional time to post 3 different versions of the same code so everyone could view it. The code wouldn't even have to be executable. Just being able to see the code and then possibly code it my current version of LabVIEW would be enough.

I just want a LabVIEW Code Viewer plug-in that would allow you to view code but not run or edit the code (images of the front and block diagrams with embedded links to documentation as suggested). The viewer would work for several versions of LabVIEW (maybe 3 or 4 major releases).

[Terry_ALE]

I think this is a great idea.  AutoCAD, Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe and other applications all have freely available viewer programs.  I think LabVIEW should have the same capability.  Most other languages which are text can be viewed by a text editor so this is not an issue.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Try this:

http://lavag.org/topic/7132-vipreview-interactive-vi-preview/

It's not exactly what you're looking for, since a person has to make the VI available for viewing, so it doesn't satisfy settlesj's use case, but it does satisfy Kezar's.

[mstoops]

I am merely looking for the ability to perform code reviews. Perhaps even just a utility for LabView to output a traditional flow chart would suffice, but a real code viewer like everyone else would be very helpful.

[durin0001]

I'm having similar problems.  

I was trying to show some people a bit of code that I was working on but could not because the version of LV on the machine available was 2010 and I developed it in 2011.  An excellent opportunity to turn some new programmers on to LabVIEW was quickly squashed.

We also have the issue in peer reviews. I want people to be able to look through the code but not modify it, or don't want to have to produce a license for everyone who is reviewing it. Also, when we perform the reviews it's usually in a conference room where the dev environment is not available, so we need to check out a license from the license server to a laptop and carry that into the room, where it would be much easier to just use a viewer.

This would be a big help.  Kudos!