Darren's Weekly Nugget 11/23/2009

[Darren]

Did you know you can configure VIs on the palettes to drop the contents of the VI, instead of the VI itself, when dropped from the palettes or Quick Drop?  When you are editing the palette file that contains the palette VI in question, you can select Place VI Contents in its right-click menu to enable this functionality:

Some notable Place VI Contents VIs you might see in the LabVIEW palettes include the Word Constants (seen above),  the JKI State Machine, and even the True Constant. 

Historical Note:  Place VI Contents VIs used to be called Merge VIs.  But when we added the ability to "merge" VIs in LabVIEW 8.5, the name was changed to Place VI Contents to avoid user confusion over the two very different features.

[Broken_Arrow]

Place pre-formed structures quickly with Place VI Contents...

Message Edited by Broken Arrow on 11-23-2009 01:26 PM

[tst]

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Darren wrote:

Did you know...

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You do if you read nuggets... 😉

[Jarrod_S.]

This thread inspired me.

I love the Place VI Contents option, but (and there's always a but) it is simply too cumbersome to go through the process of creating a VI with the template information and adding it to the palettes. Maybe not hard, but cumbersome and annoying. This ends up meaning that I rarely use this really nice feature, because I never have the time to stop what I'm doing and throw away 15 minutes, even if it saves me time down the road.

So... I decided a QuickDrop plugin would be a great way to solve this. I created a plugin for the letter G which does the following:

1. Copies the current block diagram selection.
2. Prompts you to specify a template name.
3. Pastes it to a new VI and saves it according to your name.
4. Adds this item to a QuickDrop Templates palette and sets it to Place VI Contents.
5. If Shift was pressed (Ctrl-Shift-G), refresh the palettes immediately. Otherwise they will refresh when you reload LabVIEW.

I'm attaching it below (LV2009). It saves the VIs created in a folder <LabVIEW Data>\QuickDrop Templates. It saves the palette in user.lib so it will link in automatically. Just copy the attached VI to <LabVIEW 2009>\resource\dialog\QuickDrop\plugins. If you already have a G plugin, select a new letter. To use it, just select something on a block diagram and select Ctrl-G or Ctrl-Shift-G.

Message Edited by Support on 11-23-2009 04:22 PM

[Jarrod_S.]

I forgot a step in the directions. Select something on the block diagram, then hit Ctrl-Space to launch QuickDrop followed by Ctrl-G or Ctrl-Shift-G to activate the QuickDrop Template plugin.

[Darren]

That is a very cool shortcut, Jarrod.  I just tried it out and it works great!

[ohiofudu israel]

Hay Darren,

Nice Nugget

Ohiofudu

[jcarmody]

Could you modify it to present the icon editor before saving the new VI?

[jcarmody]

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@jcarmody wrote:

Could you modify it to present the icon editor before saving the new VI?

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It's done, and available in the Quick Drop Enthusiasts Community (here).