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Darin's Weakly Nugget - 1/31/11

A bit of a different tack today, I am going to describe something that should be undertaken with restraint, modifying a VI inside of vi.lib.  Almost always a sketchy idea, if you are going to modify a VI in there (ie. fix a bug) then I strongly suggest you use your own copy.  An important strength of these VIs is the tacit assumption that the version on your buddy's (customer) machine is the same as yours.  That said, here is one case where I do not see a downside.

 

Sometimes the small details have surprisingly large impact, one of the cooler new features in LV10 is the addition of the DBL numeric constant.  Unfortunately, it is set to Adapt to Entered Data, so as soon as you type '1' it reverts to I32.  My years of typing 1.0 help most of the time, but I still have a strong personal preference to keep it orange.  If you look inside vi.lib/dlg_ctls.llb (LV10+) you will see the DBL Numeric Constant VI.  Opening this guy shows a pretty simple BD, this is a Used-to-be-called-Merge VI-that-is-now-sometimes-called-a-VI-set-to-place-contents-but-still-confusingly-called-Merge-VI-by-others, which means that when it is placed from the palette the contents of the BD are placed and not a subVI.  Right-click on the constant, deselect 'Adapt to Entered Data' then Save.  Since only the contents are placed, you are safe to modify this constant to your liking, maybe you prefer a different default display format.

 

DBL Constant.png

 

Homework:  Let's say you would prefer that the Compound Arithmetic Node would default to 'AND' when dropped from the Boolean palette.

Message 1 of 7
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I agree that adapt to type is annoying for these diagram constants. See also our recent discussion here.

 

Of course I would never touch anything inside vi.lib ......

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Message 2 of 7
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You should post on the idea exchange about changing this. Then again having it set to Adapt to Entered Data almost sounds like a bug. I never noticed it before because I don't think I have ever dropped a numeric constant of any kind onto the block diagram using the pallette. I usually right click something and create a constant from there.

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LabVIEW 2012


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@altenbach wrote:

I agree that adapt to type is annoying for these diagram constants. See also our recent discussion here.

 

Of course I would never touch anything inside vi.lib ......


 

 

I added 'Bold' to the link in my original post to that thread.

 

This is about the extent of the changes I suggest anybody else make, as to the havoc I am willing to wreak on my personal version of vi.lib, that is a matter for the imagination.

 

 

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Message 4 of 7
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It's more like a task reminiscent of Sysiphus, With every patch or upgrade, you need to start again from square one. 😞

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@Darin.K wrote:

 Opening this guy shows a pretty simple BD, this is a Used-to-be-called-Merge VI-that-is-now-sometimes-called-a-VI-set-to-place-contents-but-still-confusingly-called-Merge-VI-by-others


Kudos solely on the basis of a well thought out and correct usage of the hyphen.

 

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@altenbach wrote:

It's more like a task reminiscent of Sysiphus, With every patch or upgrade, you need to start again from square one. 😞


Ah, but LV is my virtual Sysiphus, especially with my disdain for repetitive tasks.  A strategic use of Recursive Directory List along with 'Date Modified' and I can quickly and painlessly propagate changes from one version to the next.   The number, even for me, is relatively small, about a half dozen bug fixes, a few performance tweaks, and a few customized controls and constants are about all of the changes I make in there.

 

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