Show hidden controls as "ghosts" in edit mode

[User32654823]

It's ok. I also dont want to attack you nor NI.

But i am unhappy with the kind of implementation of the "hidden control" feature.

If i set a control to the attribut hidden in the designer, ok it is my problem. Its not nice that i never can't set its unhidden easily...

But i also set controls hidden during the runtime. After the end of the application these control are now hidden in the designer too.

I have a big labview project, there are a lot of controls. And for a lot of them i have to look in block diagram, thats very confusing, because the search is difficult.

What i mean is, it would be better to show hidden controls in the designer too, maybe as gray out or something like that. It's not nice to design with invisible controls 😉

I understand it seems that this problem doesn't have high priority for NI, but i guess a lot of LV users are unhappy with it...

[wiebe@CARYA]

They did implement this for clusters. They should also implement it for panes...

Regards,

Wiebe.

[wiebe@CARYA]

Hi,

Here is Warren Massey's version, with some small modifications.

I've added a highlight button, and a find terminal button. We have to use scripting functions anyway...

I also modified the window sizing a little bit, since we can use autoscaling controls in panes now. This makes the code a lot easier to read.

Regards,

Wiebe.

[User32654823]

Thank you for this VI.

But it has an error's when i open this VI.

It looks like a conflict because of two different classes.

If i want to fix this error by using a typecast, i can't reopen this VI, because the main dialog of this VI flashs for a short while and it were closed very quickly.

[wiebe@CARYA]

What LV version are you using? It was created in 8.6.1, and then saved back to 8.0. Then I reopened it in 8.2 and 8.6.1, and it worked just fine. Apparently, some new version changed the Controls[] property of the pane and cluster to Elements[]... It shouldn't do that, if you'd ask me.

If you create a new VI, and then put the VI in it as a sub VI, you'll be able to edit it at will, without the VI closing itself. Be carefull though, if you have the VI in the diagram, LV did crash when I activated it from the menu. It did not crash when I put a disabled case around it.

Regards,

Wiebe.

[tst]

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@User32654823 wrote:

it would be better to show hidden controls in the designer too, maybe as gray out or something like that. It's not nice to design with invisible controls 😉

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This I agree with. Enough to create an idea for it:

Show hidden controls as "ghosts" in edit mode

Also, have you seen this one?

[User32654823]

I'm using LV 2009 SP1.

It seems that Panel and Cluster are two different classes now

[User32654823]

@tst

Exactly that's what I want to have for it. Is it so difficult to implement (for NI)

[tst]

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@User32654823 wrote:
It seems that Panel and Cluster are two different classes now

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They always have been. The two have nothing to do with each other.

I actually understand perfectly well why this method was implemented for cluster controls (regardless of whether or not it should have been added to the VI) - controls inside a cluster don't have a terminal on the diagram, so the only way to manually make them visible had to be through the cluster.

[tst]

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@User32654823 wrote:
Is it so difficult to implement (for NI)

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Who said it's difficult? It's possible they just never thought of it.

I certainly haven't thought of it until now and I can tell you that one of the votes on that idea is from the guy who created LV in the first place. I assume that if he would have thought of this before, it would have happened by now.