Hidden nodes and block diagram elements

[Arcus]

Hi All,

I have this wierd situation where having a terribly huge program, wierd things happens. The main loop which is a massive while loop has been resized a few times in the past and now, the "stop on true" conditional element

of the while loop is nowhere to be found but hidden far far away. All I can see are the dotted lines that links the stop button to it. Expanding the while loop to reach it seems to do nothing as it continues to be somewhere out there. the while loop seems to be at its limits already and can't be expanded anymore. I tried to the the block diagram cleanup but its useless as it is another problem to the huge program, it doesn't allow me to cleanup for some reason and it would uncover more problems as well. If anyone has an idea out there, Please let me know. thanks!

[crossrulz]

That's impressive.  I have never gotten the loop conditional node to get outside of the loop boundary.  Are you sure the node isn't inside of your loop and the wire loops back to it?  I would also try turning the Autogrow on for the loop.  That might show something.

[johnsold]

When diagrams get really large (>15000 pixels wide or several thousand high), some very strange things happen.  I think I have seen lost nodes but I do not recall whether recovery was possible.

Before you do anything else try to save the VI with a different name. Protect any old backups you may have. You may be able to go back to an earlier copy and avoid some of the blowups. Document as much as possible what the code is supposed to do.

Definitely do not use DIagram Cleanup on any diagram which is much bigger than one screen size. It may very well expand the diagram into the danger zone.

These warnings are to provide a small amount of assistance in the event that you are forced to rewrite the VI.

Good luck.

Lynn

[tst]

The first option you could try is making sure that auto-grow is enabled on the loop. I don't know if that will help.

The second thing is that If you know some scripting, you could try that to recover the terminal. You will need to get a reference to the while loop, which has a property which returns the reference of the conditional terminal. You can then either try setting the position on it or use the top level diagram's Make Selection method to select it and then move it holding Shift+Up.

[PatrickLye]

After backing up you might want to clean up the code by putting it into subVIs and copy those few VIs into a new loop to recover it. Getting it into a manageable size should help. Then delete the old loop.

[JÞB · Accepted solution]

Another way to get a hidden node focus is run VI Analizer and the report will have a list of hidden objects..  just double-click the warning and the node will get focus!  then use the arrow keys to move it back into view. 

[tst]

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@JÞB wrote:

Another way to get a hidden node focus is run VI Analizer and the report will have a list of hidden objects..  just double-click the warning and the node will get focus!  then use the arrow keys to move it back into view. 

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It might also be visible if you choose to show warnings. Simpler than running VIA, although I expect with a VI in this state the warnings list is going to be somewhat long.

[JÞB]

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@tst wrote:

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@JÞB wrote:

Another way to get a hidden node focus is run VI Analizer and the report will have a list of hidden objects..  just double-click the warning and the node will get focus!  then use the arrow keys to move it back into view. 

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It might also be visible if you choose to show warnings. Simpler than running VIA, although I expect with a VI in this state the warnings list is going to be somewhat long.

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I agree but a VIA run might just point out a few other "Don't Do That!" programming practises the OP might benefit from learning not to do.

[Arcus]

Hi All,

Showing the warnings seems to help a bit. I don't mind digging through each warning to look for the hidden terminals and elements. One challenge I have now is to locate the loop where the element or terminal belongs to. There is one terminal I am trying to move around each loop hoping the icon can be seen instead of the dash line (hidden). This is fun!:womanmad:

[JÞB · Accepted solution]

Fun.  I have a LabVIEW T-Shirt that says "Its OK to have fun!"

If you are digging through that many warnings...You are doing a few things wrong. You may find the style guide a useful resource to improve your code http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/321393d.pdf#labview_style_guide