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How to change properties at design time?

Hello ,

I am new to Lab View and want to ask a thing that I couldn't find help for:

I placed a slide control onto my VI and now want to change the look of it. I found out how to do it programatically, but

- it seems to be quite a lot of drawing to change several properties this way

-I want to change them at design time and keep the changes permanently

I found the properties window of the control and the things I can do there, but I feel there are many more properties like for example

- the hight of the numerical value display

- the background color and frame look of the numeric value display

- the fonts and alingments

- the exact positions or alignments ot the label, caption and numeric value displays

- and others

 

I think it is similar with other controls, so my question is how  I can access these properties at design time?

 

Thanks a lot

 

Martin

 

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Message 1 of 9
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Hi Martin,

 

you can use all the tools available in the front panel at edit time: brush, pointer, hand, right-click menu with properties…

 

And you can create control typedefs to store your changes for later re-use!

Best regards,
GerdW


using LV2016/2019/2021 on Win10/11+cRIO, TestStand2016/2019
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I was annoyed by that same limitation, so I created the attached code.


WARNING: THE ATTACHED CODE IS DANGEROUS!  IT CAN CAUSE LABVIEW TO CRASH!  WORSE YET, IT CAN PUT LABVIEW IN AN UNSTABLE STATE, CAUSING IT TO CRASH LATER.  USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

However I haven't known it to cause problems when accessing ordinary properties.

 

Place the .llb in C:\Program Files *\National Instruments\LabVIEW *\project\

 

The next time you run LABView, in the Tools menu you will see "Super_Properties...".  Selecting that runs the program that gives you access to nearly every property of every object.  Click on the Help button for instructions.  Note: Colors in the propery list mean the same as colors of property nodes: Yellow = Normal, Cyan = Scripting, Tan = Private, Pink = Deprecated.

 

"If you weren't supposed to push it, it wouldn't be a button."
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Hello,


WARNING: THE ATTACHED CODE IS DANGEROUS!  IT CAN CAUSE LABVIEW TO CRASH!  WORSE YET, IT CAN PUT LABVIEW IN AN UNSTABLE STATE, CAUSING IT TO CRASH LATER.  USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Well, that's not quite what a newbie needs.

But if it is that easy:

 

Place the .llb in C:\Program Files *\National Instruments\LabVIEW *\project\

 

why isn't it a fully NI approved tool?

Just to explain my needs:

I have a working application, everything is ready and it runs on a small display, now there is a need for a (much) larger display. But simply allowing a resize keeps the font sizes and changes the relative positions, so everything look different and not very good. I was hoping to change that without any code changes.

 

Martin

 

 

 


 

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Generally it is better to design your user interface to a fixed size - you can use splitters to allow certain parts of your front panel to grow/shrink (e.g. graphs) but generally if I had to make an application have a small and a large user interface I would create two separate user interface VIs. LabVIEW isn't great for fluid/dynamic sizing user interfaces but the best bet to get close is to use splitters.


LabVIEW Champion, CLA, CLED, CTD
(blog)
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You ask " But if it is that easy:  'Place the .llb in C:\Program Files *\National Instruments\LabVIEW *\project\' why isn't it a fully NI approved tool?"

 

I don't work for NI.  I haven't submitted this as a suggested tool.  I wrote it for my own use and I've shared it.  It addresses the issue you raised of accessing certain properties at design time.  If you don't like it, fine; but don't complain about a free tool that does what you said you wanted.

"If you weren't supposed to push it, it wouldn't be a button."
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Yup the best solution is splitters and panes (painful panes).  You can do just about anything you want with your UI if you spend some time learning the ins and outs of splitters and panes.  But I totally agree that LabVIEW is not the best at handling UIs for multiple resolutions with a complicated UI.

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Hello Paul,

 

please excuse me, I was a little unprecise. My question was not addressed to you but to NI who I think read these threads too. I think there are more people who came across this limitation.

I appreciate if people share their work and I will keep your tool in mind but the warning for now keeps me from using it.

 

Thank you anyway for your answer and your help

 

Martin

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@Mr_M_from_G wrote:

 

please excuse me, I was a little unprecise. My question was not addressed to you but to NI who I think read these threads too. I think there are more people who came across this limitation.

I appreciate if people share their work and I will keep your tool in mind but the warning for now keeps me from using it.


In my opinion NI should not focus on making tools for LabVIEW, but instead focus on allowing others to make tools.  Tools made by NI are of a very good quality so it is difficult for me to say this but it is true.  NI should have an eco system where they aren't asked to support every niche tool, or piece of hardware, but instead others develop tools and APIs.  Sometimes this means you get poor quality tools, but the benefit is the fast turn around that is possible with community sourced software.  

For this reason I would not want NI to develop a tool like the one posted here.  I think NI has done a decent amount of work creating, and documenting all of the property and invoke functions of all the object types that LabVIEW supports.  But if you disagree and think NI should make a tool like this, you are welcome to post on the Idea Exchange where other developers vote on features they want to see in LabVIEW.

 

As of today there is a native feature that helps find properties of objects called the Class Browser, which can be brought up with the CTRL + Shift + B.

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