Building a GUI out of SubVIs possible?

[okivimak]

Hello,

is there a way to build an user-interface using many SubVIs that contain all the controls and indicators.

I'm developing an automated testing interface which has a Tab Control with six tabs. Each tab has MANY indicators and controls so the total amount of controls and indicators on the whole front panel would be somewhere around 300-400! (very messy)

I don't want many separate windows (which would be easy to make), just one frontpanel with a tab control.

So, is there a way to put all the controls and indicators of page 1 of the tab control to one SubVI (named for example tab1.vi) and page 2 to tab2.vi .. and so on. All the controls and indicators would be on their corresponding (tab) page and the data available on the "main.vi".

I played around with control references but they are (probably?) used in a somewhat opposite problem (small amount of controls and indicators but large amounts of non-graphical calculation etc.).

Subpanels don't seem so attractive either.


Any suggestions on how to make my idea work, or if it is not possible; what would be the best way to implement my GUI?


Thanks.

[johnsold]

You could have a GUI subVI for each of your tests. Under VI Properties>>Execution>> Select Open front panel when called and close afterwards. On your Main VI have a selector, either the tab control or perhaps an enum on the tab page, which calls the GUI subVI. You can then have as many tests as you need and they may have very different GUIs, as appropriate.

Lynn

[Bob_Y.]

SubPanel.

I think what you are looking for is a SubPanel. With the most recent versions of LabVIEW, there is a contrainer called a SubPanel that lets you call a VI and place its front panel into this container. This is not a subVI in the normal sense, but more like a seperatly launched VI whose front panel is trapped in the one location. After you play with it a little, you'll get it. It does take some getting used to, however.

Hope that this helps,
Bob Young

[DD]

LTR just had an article on this.
http://www.ltrpub.com/currentissue/index.htm

[okivimak]

Thank you all for your answers, I'll order and check the LTR article, and I'll probably use those SubPanels. (I tried them earlier but they did not impress me..)

The idea about calling and closing subVI's frontpanel-window from the "main VI" is not bad either, but then I would not use the tab control at all, instead I could make buttons to the main VI such as: "configure oscilloscope", "configure datalogger" etc. and those buttons would pop the corresponding subVI frontpanel.. and when the user has finished configuring, the window would be closed.. In addition to this LabView based user interface users in our lab use many other programs at the same time, so the less there are open windows the better.


Ok, but now I know what CAN be done. 🙂

Thanks again!