Good Looking controls/indicators

[quexin]

Where can I download some good looking controls/indicators. 

I could not find a post or a website that contains a library of such custom, good looking controls/indicators.

But I am sure someone has to have posted them online for other people to use.

[crossrulz]

You can check out the UI Interest Group.

[Bob_Schor]

There is also the LabVIEW Tools Network.

BS

[quexin]

Is there a specific set on the tools network or the UI Group (Thanks for directing me to these sites) you guys use when designing stuff?

Or do you all generally make your own/use stock ones

[Jacobson-ni]

I like the system controls/indicators for many cases.

A lot of us engineers (myself included) are not the best at developing user interfaces that are intuitive and appealing.  I see some people go overboard with custom controls which can sometimes make the application look cheap.  System controls don't date the application as much and look pretty clean.

Now I have seen some really good applications built with custom controls that look amazing but it is not something I am able to do very well.

[James.M]

Making the application really pretty takes a lot of extra work. I worked on an application where the client had their graphic designer create all of the buttons and indicators for us as images that we then had to import in to LabVIEW and make functional custom controls/indicators. We also used a perfectly designed image as the front panel background so it all meshed together. We had picture controls that would change based on the state of the application and different components that would be either shown or hidden.

Ultimately the whole thing took forever to work on and was pretty monotonous, but it all worked out because we were getting paid by the hour 

This is the only LV application I've ever seen that I had no idea it was LabVIEW.

[Hooovahh]

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@James.M wrote:

This is the only LV application I've ever seen that I had no idea it was LabVIEW.

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This makes me sad.  I'd say over half the medium to large applications I've worked on don't immediatly look like LabVIEW, but I did spend a bit more time making them that way.  I agree that it is extra work, but I find satisfaction knowing the tricks to make UI's look like a Windows program and not a LabVIEW program.

For me sticking with system controls (and System 2.0) help a lot.  I wrote scripting code that would generate system boolean controls based on images which worked nice too.  I also work a decent amount on window resize and making panes that work well together.  In the end my UIs resize smoothly without any code needing to run, but once in a while I have some code that gets ran on the resize event to do some really custom things.  Copy/Paste, drag and drop, intuitive UI's, right clicking, tabs, subpanels, and panes, can be a pain to work with but I really enjoy it when people don't know it is LabVIEW being used.

[Jacobson-ni]

On my phone so I can't find it right now but there is a good VI shots podcast on UI design and a separate podcast on Fabiola's five tips that I found extremely helpful.

[mikeporter]

You might also want to check out RAFA over in Armenia. They have a package of GUI tools that they distribute though the Tools Network. In fact, I think they are up for some sort of award at NIWeek.

Mike...