Copying & Pasting graphs

[Dan Brackett]

Hello --

I'm using LabVIEW 4.0 on the PC and there's one feature that I know is
there on the Mac version that I'm missing a lot: the ability to cut and
paste vector graphics from the application window. I know I can get
bitmaps with [ALT] + [Print Screen], but I'd like to be able to deal
with only part of the window...

What I'm really interested in doing is using the x-y and waveform
graphs to format my data quickly and then getting them out of labVIEW
in a format I can use in a paint program (currently Canvas 5).

I've experimented a bit with printing the output to an EPS file, and
that works as far as it goes, but it's not as elegant a solution as was
possible on the Mac.

Does anyone have a better idea as to what to do here?
Is it really
that weird to want more than a bitmap from my code?

I suppose the ultimate solution would be to write a VI that outputted a
PostScript (or some other format) vector graphics file, but that would
take more work than I think my boss would be happy paying me for ^_^.

Thanks in advance,

Dan


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[Greg_McKaskle2]

> I'm using LabVIEW 4.0 on the PC and there's one feature that I know is
> there on the Mac version that I'm missing a lot: the ability to cut and
> paste vector graphics from the application window. I know I can get
> bitmaps with [ALT] + [Print Screen], but I'd like to be able to deal
> with only part of the window...
>
> What I'm really interested in doing is using the x-y and waveform
> graphs to format my data quickly and then getting them out of labVIEW
> in a format I can use in a paint program (currently Canvas 5).
>
> I've experimented a bit with printing the output to an EPS file, and
> that works as far as it goes, but it's not as elegant a solution as was
> possible on the Mac.
>
> Does anyone have a better idea as to what to do here? Is it really
> t
hat weird to want more than a bitmap from my code?
>
> I suppose the ultimate solution would be to write a VI that outputted a
> PostScript (or some other format) vector graphics file, but that would
> take more work than I think my boss would be happy paying me for ^_^.
>

The reason its there on the Mac, is that the Mac has/had a very robust
format for vector graphics, the PICT format. The PC has had bitmap formats
and this thing called metafiles, which were pretty limited in what they
could contain. For this reason, LV didn't support output of vector
graphics on the clipboard until MS released the enhanced metafile format
or EMF. I'm not sure that LV4 has support for them, it may have been
introduced in LV4.1, but the most important piece is the OS. LV definitely
supports EMFs on Win NT, but due to the number of workarounds to be able
to support them on Win95, we reverted back to using bitmaps.

This means that the first thing to do is try this out on an NT computer.
If it do
esn't work, then get the evaluation version of a later version
and see if it works for what you want.

Greg McKaskle