Greyed (Grayed) out vi

[MJStasik]

Hi all,

I'm currently troubleshooting a system controlled by a contractor designed vi. I have no support funds so I'm stuck troubleshooting on my own. When I navigate to the vi in question to troubleshoot, I find the vi is slightly greyed out. I can't seem to figure out why or even what this means. Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks,

Mark

[altenbach]

We cannot troubleshoot pictures and the VI does not appear to be broken. Maybe the programmer simply decided to use a slightly different color for the icon?

What toolkit is this?

What does the context help window (ctrl+h)  say when you hover over it with the mouse?

[billko]

I believe that mean that the VI belongs to a private library or class and you cannot access it.

Edit:

I don't see a greyed-out VI in your picture.

[MJStasik]

Labview 2018. Not sure what you mean by toolkit. my labview experience is 20 years old. Let me just upload the vi.

[billko]

---

@MJStasik wrote:

Labview 2018. Not sure what you mean by toolkit. my labview experience is 20 years old. Let me just upload the vi.

---

In this rare case, the actual VI doesn't help much.  This is because the subVI in question isn't included in the download!  But from the picture I'm guessing that's just the way the subVI icon is.

[altenbach]

You uploaded "MoveAndMeasure" (not gray), but show the context help for "get Data".

These VIs seem to be part of a driver package or similar and I am not familiar with them.

[MJStasik]

Here is Get Data.vi. It fails right at the VISA Read and the error indicates that the device is not connected to the system. GPIB addressing and such is contained in a separate ini file. BTW, I can send queries through the VISA test panel in MAX and they work properly. This software is long proven as working valid code prior to a computer crash so I suspect something other than the code itself as the culprit.

[altenbach]

Well, that's all valid code* and the icon just has a light purple color (RGB=102,102,153), nothing gray about it. That color scheme was just the programmers choice. 😄

Obviously the VISA read fails, so most likely the problem is upstream somewhere where the resource is defined. Should be easy to debug. Are you sure the hardware/cabling is fine?

*NOTE: Some of the code is quite silly, such as the sequence frame and millisecond timer value output. Not sure why we need two successive string subset operations (twice), with a bit integer math, only a total of two subset operations are needed, not three. 😮 I am sure it could be simplified even further once we know the exact formatting of the incoming string.

[MJStasik]

I think you are correct. Very odd and a heck of a coincidence that the one icon that is giving me issues is the only one discolored. I will continue to search upstream for where the resource is defined. All hardware and cabling is fine as I said that I can easily query that instrument using NI MAX.

Thanks!

[JÞB]

---

@MJStasik wrote:

I think you are correct. Very odd and a heck of a coincidence that the one icon that is giving me issues is the only one discolored. I will continue to search upstream for where the resource is defined. All hardware and cabling is fine as I said that I can easily query that instrument using NI MAX.

Thanks!

---

It's not discolored, it's colored differently.  Likely indicating that it is part of a group of vis that control that specific VISA resource.  

Interestingly, it just might be that the resource is either not defined in the vi input cluster or, being reserved by some other program (like MAX 🤔)