LabVIEW Idea Exchange

My software is used in microscopy, and the screen brightness can be annoying for people looking into the microscope. Nowadays, all microscopy has a range of dark colour schemes, to suit the user, to either work in complete darkness, or just low-light situations.      

I want to be able to do the same, i.e. make custom color schemes.   The system color schemes don't quite satisfy, so I really want to do this programmatically.

For most controls, i can nicely change all colors using the property nodes.  But strangely enough, some controls simply don't give the option, even though you can do it manually.  The color options seem to be very inconsistent in this respect...

For example, the numeric Knob or Dial are perfect.  You can set the color of the knob, as well as the color of the ticks, the text, etc.   Similar for a slider, where every little detail can be set.

But strangely enough, the normal numeric (digital) lacks the option to set the color of increment/decrement button.  However, can set those colors manually.   The menu ring however, doesn't seem to have any way to change the color.

That doesn't make senso to me....   Why give the option to set all the colors of some controls, and then not have that option available on other controls?  

My request is to make sure that ALL controls have the color properties you need to color them programmatically.  The Knob and Slider are nice examples where it is done very well. 

Currently, the "Tab" key is not individually mapped to an action for Block Diagram interactions; my suggestion is to use it to swap between "control", "indicator" and "constant", in the same way we already do with the options of the right-click menu "Change to Control/Indicator/Constant".

As an example, having selected a control on the BD, by just pressing "Tab" we would transform it into an indicator, a second press to a constant, and a third one would bring it back into being a control.

I understand this is a simple thing, but personally, I feel this ends up being one of the most repeated actions we end up taking as developers and I believe it would be intuitive to map it to a familiar key to many of us - tab.

Thanks all,

Cris

Remark: I'm using LV2015SP1, maybe there is already a change in LV2016 which I do not know!

Question:
Why is the decoration-element-palette of the block diagramm located inside Functions => Programming => Structures ??

In my opinion it's just a styling element which can be used for everything and nothing.
So my simple idea is to move it to the top level Functions-palette so that it can be easily found and reached.

A BD control/indicator/constant can be changed to either other type by contextual menu. For individual objects, Constant as well as Show/Hide are a choice; but for multiple selections, not -- why?

Note that this is not exactly a duplicate of Every GUI Programmer's Dream... (completed in Labview 2012), rather a part of the implied request which has been left out.

Sometimes / often it happens that I add an existing VI to an exiting class or lib.

In this case the icon of the added VI stays at it is and does not change to the libraries icon. I could use the lvlib-option-function "apply icon to VIs" but this changes all my VIs which is not appreciated!

What I suggest to add is a right-click option to the VIs icon "set library icon" (see attached picture).

(In LV2017) "Browse Relationshiips\Unopened SubVIs" shows a list of icons with truncated VI names - about 12 characters per VI. When looking through a list of similar icons, one has to hover over each icon to see the full VI name.  This is impractical when hunting through tens or hundreds of SubVIs.  If unopened SubVIs could appear as an alphabetically-sorted list of VI names, it would be very helpful.

Most of the time when I add an event it's a "Value Change" type - the default type.  I usually double-click on the Event Source wanting the dialog to accept the selection and close.  Since double-click (on event source) is currently ignored, why not treat it as if the "OK" button was pressed?

Ever tried to parallelize a loop?

You just have to place your mouse over what feels an approximately 1 pixel wide area on the left side of your loop and press the right mouse-button without moving the mouse. If there was no input or case terminal around a context menu opens that gives you access to the function you need.

Point anywhere else and the contect menu doesn't contain what you need.

The context menu entry could also show if the mouse hovers over any other parts of the loop as well to make the area easier to point at.

Currently, the only way to add a webservice to a project, is by right clicking a Target and selecting New->Web Service.

There's no way to add existing Web Service definitions to a project, other than manually performing the copy operation at the XML file level.

This prevents proper re-use of IP!

I would propose extending the capabilities of a Library to also support Web Service definitions as Child objects.

That way, the library can act as a container for the Web Service definition, and can easily be reused in other projects:

I tried using an XML editor to manually put a Web Service definition underneath a Library, LabVIEW didn't like that!

When you want to look for a specific VI in your project using Ctrl+F you have an handy option to search vi by name. But this is quiet difficult to find the VI you are looking for in this windows : All VIs are listed (without structure) and there is no Filter. Something similar to Event selection window would be much better (That would have a filter and where VI's would be grouped by libraries and class)

This "Find all instance" could also be added directly in the project explorer, in the Right click -> "Find" menu