BACK by popular demand The LV State Diagram Editor! well I can dream can't I?

[Ben]

After seeing I am not alone in morning the passing of the State Diagram Editor I am going to try to get NI to resurect this wordeful tool.

For those of you that are not familiar with it, this image shows it in use.

It did not require a degree in CS to use it.

How it worked:

YOu would right-click and drop the SDe from the palette. After doing so it would create the while loop shift register enum etc to implment the State Diagram.

Right-click the while loop to show the diagram.

In the diagram you could create new states.

Right-clicking on a state let you create a new transition.

Each of the transisions could be dragged to point at any other state to let you determine the flow.

Clicking on one of the state in the diagram would result in the associated state being seelcted in the BD.

YOu could rename states.

If you had more than one posible transition out of a state, you could assign the priority in the event the condition for more than one transition was met.

YOu could put the SDE in "execution highlighting" mode and watch the state transitions while the code ran.

Any time you needed to remind yourself how the code was structured you could just right-click the WHile loop ans choose "Show State Diagram" giving you built-in documentation.

Using the SDE at development time assisted by some booleans for the conditions, you could watch your design move through all of the transitions before ever writting the code for the states themselves.

I loved it!

So I would like to find out what Y'all think of the SDE as it was and find out if you would like to have this add-on be brought back from software death and made part of the core of LV.

So am I a just "a voice crying in the wilderness"?

Post your thoughts good or bad, PLEASE,

Ben

[TiTou]

I think it is a very useful tool, not a toy for beginners, a real tool anyone can use!

In a way it makes me sad when you talk about it using the past tense ("I loved it"), as JB mentionned, even if not officially supported, it still works with recent verisons of LabVIEW.

I was pretty sure there was an idea on the Exchange that was asking for NI to bring it back but I can't find it, have I dreamt it or does it exist?

[Ben]

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@TiTou wrote:

I think it is a very useful tool, not a toy for beginners, a real tool anyone can use!

In a way it makes me sad when you talk about it using the past tense ("I loved it"), as JB mentionned, even if not officially supported, it still works with recent verisons of LabVIEW.

I was pretty sure there was an idea on the Exchange that was asking for NI to bring it back but I can't find it, have I dreamt it or does it exist?

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It is curently the "red headed" stepchild and has recieved no attention since the relese of the State Chart Toolkit.

None of the bugs have been fixed.

I would be able to start using it again in my application development if it had real support.

Thanks for the reply and if you find that Idea, link it in so I can Kudo it up.

Ben

[TiTou]

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Ben wrote:

It is curently the "red headed" stepchild and has recieved no attention since the relese of the State Chart Toolkit.

None of the bugs have been fixed. 

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Clearly NI has given up on it, do you think they would agree to "give access" to the SDE source code so that an open source project could give it the care it deserves?

Saying this I'm now thinking that doing this, they would probably reveal more "secret hooks" into LabVIEW than they want to.

One side thing, is there an official answer from NI to the question : "What were there reasons to abandon the SDE?"

Still looking through the exchange to find the idea, I'll make on if I can't find it.

[Ben]

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@TiTou wrote:

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Ben wrote:

It is curently the "red headed" stepchild and has recieved no attention since the relese of the State Chart Toolkit.

None of the bugs have been fixed. 

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Clearly NI has given up on it, do you think they would agree to "give access" to the SDE source code so that an open source project could give it the care it deserves?

Saying this I'm now thinking that doing this, they would probably reveal more "secret hooks" into LabVIEW than they want to.

One side thing, is there an official answer from NI to the question : "What were there reasons to abandon the SDE?"

Still looking through the exchange to find the idea, I'll make on if I can't find it.

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That is a wonderful idea !

I can only guess what the official reason was.

Ben

[TiTou]

I've created the idea.

I borrowed your screenshot without asking, I hope you don't mind.

[SteveChandler]

Hey JKI, if NI isn't interested you know what to do.

[GuenterMueller]

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That is a wonderful idea !

[...]

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I fully agree, Ben.  (Regrettably there is no "Me too" button in your post. )

[RTSLVU]

OMFG I never knew such a thing existed!

I WANT IT and I want it NOW!

That would make my life so much eaiser as probably 99% of my programs are a state machine.

[tst]

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@Ben wrote:

I can only guess what the official reason was.

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I have no idea what the official reason was, but one good reason was that it uses external nodes. Those were abandoned when XNodes were introduced (which will themselves apparently be abandoned for some future tech). Maybe NI didn't want to bother rewriting it or supporting old tech.