Swap Inputs

[JackDunaway]

In order to straighten out your wires and reduces crossover, it's often necessary to swap inputs. Or, if you accidentally wire y^x when you wanted x^y, you need to swap inputs. Currently, we must delete the wires to both inputs, then rewire into the opposite input. Proposed: "Swap Inputs" option:

(The expected behavior is obvious for a function that only has two inputs - please give your input on expected behavior on functions with more than two inputs. Right now I lean toward limiting "Swap Inputs" to primitives and user-defined functions that only have 2 inputs)

[crelf]

This already exists: mouse over one of the inputs so that your cursor changes to the wiring tool, hold down ctrl (it will change to the "swap inputs" tool - looks like a little loop) and click.

[JackDunaway]

Sure enough, crelf is right. Check out this page under the section "Undoing Wires." I have logged ballpark 3000 hours in LabVIEW in the past few years, and never knew about this feature!

I have to quote Joel on Software here: "As a customer, the only thing better than getting feature requests done quickly is getting them instantaneously because they're already in the product, because it was designed thoughtfully with extensive usability".

Thanks, LabVIEW R&D for approving and implementing this feature so... instantaneously!

[altenbach]

This is one of the great features that I use very often. 🙂

Still, it's not perfect. It currently only works if both inputs are connected. However, it should also work if only one of the inputs is connected, swapping the connected input to the other terminal.

Thanks for the reminder. I'll write this up as a new idea.

[altenbach]

> Thanks for the reminder. I'll write this up as a new idea.

See here.

[tst]

My connector pane swapping idea was very popular, so here's its natural counterpart - this should work on any input or output.

Unfortunately, you can't give kudos to individual posts, so I suggested it as a new idea here.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

A feature that is hidden might as well not exist. Adding "Swap Inputs" to the pop up menus is still a good idea even if the keyboard shortcut exists. Adding it as "Swap Inputs (ctrl+click)" so that people learn the shortcut is optimal.

[JackDunaway]

Actually, no reason to further much up the right-click menu now that I know how to use it! The CTRL+Click is a better, faster method that my menu idea. So, scratch that!

Alternatively, just paste a neat illustration of a before-and-after, including the cursor icon, into the documentation next to text that tells how to do it. Honestly, put more code snippets (pictures) in the documentation! If we're going to program visually, we need to document visually! I'm not dogging LV documentation here... but due to a completely nonchalant sentence buried in documentation, a really sweet, useful feature has slipped through the cracks.

[altenbach]

All you need is memorize this table. There will be a test later. 😄

I agree that the help would benefit from more visuals, but at the same time it would significantly increase the size of the documentation. May be a few short video tutorials would help?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

mechelecengr wrote (emphasis added by me):

> Actually, no reason to further much up the right-click menu now that

> I know how to use it! The CTRL+Click is a better, faster method that

> my menu idea. So, scratch that!

Of course the shortcut is faster and better -- if you know about it. Adding it to the shortcut menu is important so that people can find the functionality in the first place without going X years until they happen to read about it in some random forum post. Greg McKaskle has insisted for years that any feature that isn't findable through the visible user interface (popup menus, drop down menus, adorners like grab handles that appear, etc) might as well not exist for most users. The interface has to teach people as they use it so that over time they learn the shortcuts. This is an example of that. 

So, yes, there is still a reason to "much" up  the right-click menu. The functionality is invisible. It shouldn't be.