Change border of cluster control

[hiall]

Hello,

I know that the following has been asked before, but at the time there was no solution, and I wonder if there is solution now:

I want to put a cluster control into a 2D-array control. I want to have the array control displayed as compact as possible. Therefore, I would like to remove the border of the cluster, which takes a lot of space.

1) Can one manipulate the width of the border of a cluster control?
2) Did anyone make a cluster control with a narrow or vanishing border?
3) Could be making a huge control, and then use the "scale control with screen" option be a possible way?

Making the cluster border invisible does not solve the problem, as even the invisible cluster border takes its space.

Thanks a lot,

K
ai@MIT

[JRA]

I'm pasting some information I found on a Knowledge Base from NI's website. This may help you out. It discusses making the border invisible and how you can do that:

Problem: I am trying to make the border of my cluster container invisible on a front panel in LabVIEW. I have selected the paint brush from the Tools Palette and right-clicked on the border. If I select transparent, nothing seems to happen. What am I doing wrong?

Solution: In order to make the border transparent, you have to change the foreground color to be transparent. By default, when you right-click on the border, it gives you the option to select the background color. However, merely changing the background color will have no effect on the border. To change the foreground color, you
have to right-click on the border, hit the space bar to toggle between the foreground and background, and select the "T" for transparent.

Note: Pressing the space bar once will select both the foreground and background colors. Pressing it twice will toggle to the foreground color alone. A third time will return you to the background color.

You might also assume that selecting the foreground color from the Tools Palette would have the same effect, but by default, the border foreground color cannot be changed by left-clicking on a 3-D control. Therefore, you have to use the method described above to change the transparency of the border. For the cluster container found in Controls Palette » Classic Controls » Array & Cluster, left-clicking will allow you to change the foreground color.

[hiall]

Dear JRA,

thanks for your answer. As I said, my question has been asked before, and I carefully read the thread you were pasting to me before I posted my question. If you read the old thread carefully you notice that the problem was not resolved. Again, making the cluster border invisible does not remove the undesired space the border takes.

Does anybody have a solution to this since the old threat about changing the border width (not its visibility!) was posted quite some time ago?

Thanks,

Kai@MIT

[JeanPierre]

For
1) Still, no there is no way set the border width of a cluster.
2) Sort of... The diamond shaped cursor pad of the classic graph control is indeed a cluster of 4 booleans that you can bring in the control editor to modify to add/replace controls. The border of this cluster is thinner (2 pixels instead of 4). However, it is not really designed to be edited and used this way and might crash LabVIEW when editing it. Not recommended.
In the seldom case where all your cluster elements are numeric, you can use a slide with many sliders. Showing digital displays, you will have a cluster of numeric controls with no border at all. The slide itself can be minimized and hidden.
3) What do you mean "a huge control"?

[hiall]

Dear Jean-Pierre,

thanks for your helpful info.

on 2) I will try to get the manipulated cursor pad to work. Doesn't look bad yet.

on 3) By "huge conotrol" I mean to custumize my cluster and make it large in a large window (with a 4 pixel border) before I use some "scale panel with window size" option to display it normal size (with a much narrower border). Do you think this could work?

Thanks,

Kai

[stephen.berks]

If you really need to get an array to appear small and you don't mind cheating, try this. Convert the array to a sting and display the output in a string indicator. It will take about half the space.

Steve

[Steffen01]

seems if you right click the outline and select "insert image" and this image is smaller than your control, then the control becomes smaller