Automatic tool. Do everyone use it?

[Khalid]

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@Aitortxo wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.

I see many of you do use it and is very happy with it, keep on it. I have noticed it's an advance to do many things with less keystrokes and clicks and to insert data into controls.

but, uff.... it's too much for me.

I'm sorry. You must be too precise where you point your mouse to let LV know what is the tool you need, specially if you are trying to move elements.

If you have positioning tool selected, you move it no matter where you click on an element. With automatic tool, sometimes you have to click in the center (SubVIs, for example), others "not in the center" (Unbundle by name, for example) and other you have to be very precise (moving arrays, for example)

I think my mind is used to TAB and SPACE... I feel unconfortable with me left hand "underused" (well, actually I have been pressing TAB and SPACE)

... I think I'll wait a litte to give it another try, this morning has been hard. Khalid, TiTou and KC: I'm back in the TAB and SPACE again.

I think the group concerned in programing Automatic Tool for LV does program in LV in a different way than me, and so doesn't fit to me completely. May be I'm too strange. But don't worry, so you have a large group that does use it as a very nice improvement.

Thanks for the feedback again,

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Exactly how I felt/feel!  And not that I didn't give it more than one try...

-Khalid

[Ben]

Put another X in the tab column for me. Once you learn how many tabs takes you from one tool to the next, you can do the switch faster than LV can guess.

Ben

Message Edited by Ben on 03-17-2006 07:24 AM

[maat]

At first I didn't like the Auto Tool either.  I always hate it when the computer is trying to be smarter than you.  After awhile I started to like it.  Sometimes its a pain, but now I use it almost all the time.  When you need to pick a tool, just start tabbing and it turns off the Auto-Tool.  Then hit Shift-Tab and it turns the auto tool back on...

[RobbieG]

I use the autoTool except for when I need the coloring tool.  Then, shift-right-click is the way to go.  I also thought I'd mention, since no one else has yet, that the Ctrl key will bring up the 2nd-most-likely tool.  So, if LabVIEW is guessing wrong, this is a faster alternative to bringing up the tools palette.

Admittedly, I started using LabVIEW in 5.1, so I didn't have that many years of a tabbing habit to break.  But I think I'm a faster LabVIEW developer with the autoTool than I was without it.  And, as someone mentioned before, the logic seems to get better with each release (I actually find myself relying on Ctrl less), so I'd encourage opponents of the autoTool to give it a try every once in a while.

Robbie

[jdebuhr]

Yeah at first I did not like the auto tool, but I gave it a try.. now when i need to do something in 6.0.1 I miss the auto tool. I use it all the time except, like some others, when i need to change the colors. otherwise it is always on.

[jasonhill]

At some point while teaching myself LabView I must have closed the tool palette with the autotool on.  I used it like that for about six months until a coworker (who thinks autotool is from the devil) was showing me how to add colors. 

This thread did make me take a careful look at how I use the autotool.  For moving items, I typically do a precision click in the spot I know does not have any menus/wires/whatever.   Once it is selected, I reclick it for the gross-motor-slinging-about-the-block-diagram.  Finally, I click on some empty spot on the block diagram to unselect it.  Like I said, all of this was so buried in my subconsious that I had to carefully watch what I was doing to even see it.  It all happens faster than I can pound on the tab and/or space keys.  I don't know what people mean about having to "wait for the autotool".  In LV8 on a rather decrepid Celeron system, the tool changes as fast as I can whip the mouse across the monitor.

Only two components give me issues with the autotool:
-Compound math, because the operator "box" is the same yellowish as the rest of the control.  I will think it is "safe" to move with.  Instead I get the menu popup. 
-The stop control on while loops, because the bugger is so small and has to have room for  a wire terminal, popup menu, and grab handles.

In general thought, miss-clicks are a sign of too much coffee. 

[tst]

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@jasonhill wrote:
-Compound math, because the operator "box" is the same yellowish as the rest of the control.  I will think it is "safe" to move with.  Instead I get the menu popup. 

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That is definitely one place where the auto tool operation could be improved. What annoys me is that the "box" is only a few pixels big, so it's hard to change the operation with a single click.

[amiramke]

Hi!

I too turned the Auto tool off after upgrading from LV5, but it finally grew on me. Like everything else in life, it just takes a bit getting used too. Now I can't do without it.

Ami 

[johnsold]

I turn it off. Maybe after reading this thrread, I will try it again.

Lynn

[tbob]

Here is something worth mentioning.  I learned HPVEE before I started with Labview.  HPVEE had auto tool as a standard from their very beginning.   So I got used to it and learned where to click precisely.  Then I started using LV 5.1, no auto tool.  I found it to be a great pain to have to use my other hand for the Tab key, and had to keep pressing the Tab key until I got the tool I wanted.  Often I would overshoot the tool and had to press the Tab key some more.  Yuck.  It was a great step backward for me.  Regardless, I kept with Labview because it was just much better in many ways, except for auto tool.  So when auto tool came out in LV, I jumped for joy.  If I had to go back to 5.1, I would become very frustrated very quickly.

Ergonomically speaking, I can sit back and relax as I am writing code with auto tool on.  When using the Tab key, I have to hunch over the keyboard, and I cannot sit back in my chair, unless I put the keyboard on my lap.  Of course I have to occasionally hunch up to the keyboard to type in strings and comments and labels and such, but that is a small percentage of the time.