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Cluster vs Tab Control for selecting indicator viewing

Hello All,

 

  I am looking for alternatives to the front panel "Tab Control" container that would behave more like a cluster and less like an enum.  In order to make my front panel well organized and more user friendly I have situated many of the controls in a Tab Control.  I am able to do this because I rarely need to manipulate or view multiple indicators simultaneously.  This works well for manual testing, but not so much for automated testing with TestStand, because TestStand will not recognize a Tab Control as a container (it sees it as a single enum).  I am trying my best to keep the VI reusable for both manual and automated testing.

 

Any suggestions for organizing controls and indicators in a front panel cluster that would still allow them to be selectable for viewing?  I have posted a similar request in the TestStand discussion board to see if I can find a solution from that end.

 

Thanks much,

GSinMN  

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Hi GSinMN

 

Just as you said, the Tab Control does not change the program dynamic. It does only change the look of the front panel to make it more users friendly.

 

In this links you can see different options for the front panel but I am not quite sure there is a way to help you with the TestStand part.

 

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361J-01/lvconcepts/fp_controls_indicators/

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361J-01/lvconcepts/custom_cont_ind_type/

 

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For any given tab on your user-friendly front panel, you could group all the controls on that tab into a single cluster. Each tab would have its own controls cluster so you'd end up with as many controls clusters as you had tab pages. This at least reduces the number of control items that you would need to link to from a calling routine. Just because a cluster cannot hold both controls and indicators, you need to find a way to segregate them on the tabs.  This Minimal Cluster Border Control may help with the appearance of the clusters; if nothing else, it is a neat tool to have in your LabVIEW toolbox.

 

A totally different solution to the problem would to create a "worker" VI that easily interfaces to TestStand or any other higher-level interface and then build a rather hollow user-interface (UI) VI with the nice front panel. The UI VI calls the worker VI to do any work that's required.  In a variant of this, the UI VI bundles up references to all the F.P. control and indicators and passes them down to the worker VI which is smart enough to realize that the UI VI is active (rather than TestStand) and the worker then uses all the references to manage the UI front panel.

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