LabVIEW 2010 SP1: "Controls" pop-up palette > "Select a control..." bug?

[jfischer]

I'm using LabVIEW 2010 SP1 (32-bit) and I noticed today that I cannot place my custom controls on a VI's front panel when I use the "Select a Control..." option on the "Controls" pop-up palette. I'm wondering if anyone else is having this same problem?

Steps to reproduce the problem:

1) Create a custom control, or download/save the attached custom control "Machine State.ctl" (< a strictly-typed enum control).

2) Open a VI (new or existing).

2.1) If the "Controls" palette is visible (pinned open), close it.

3) Right-click with the mouse on the VI's front panel window to display the "Controls" pop-up palette.

Note: DO NOT use the "Controls" option in the "View" menu here.

Note: DO NOT pin open the Controls pop-up palette at this point.

See my comments below in the "Notes" section.

4) "Controls" palette > "Select a Control..." option

5) Using the "Select the Control to Open" dialog, browse to, select and open the custom control file (e.g., "Machine State.ctl").

At this point the on-screen cursor should show the outline of an instance of the custom control I just opened, but for me that doesn't happen; all I see is the "+" crosshair cursor, and left-clicking with the mouse on the front panel does not place an instance of the custom control on the front panel.

Notes:

* In step 3) above, if I open the VI's "View" menu and select the "Controls" option, or if I pop-up the "Controls" palette and pin the palette to keep it open, I can successfully use the "Select a Control..." option to browse to, select, open, and place an instance of my custom control on the VI's front panel. The failure only occurs when I use the "Select a Control..." option on the pop-up (unpinned) version of the Controls palette.

* I can successfully drag-and-drop an instance of a custom control onto a VI's front panel from a Windows Explorer window, or from the LabVIEW project explorer window.

* The host computer is running Windows 7 Enterprise x64 w/ SP1.

Jim

[Matthew_Kelton]

No problem here on LV2010 SP1 on Win 7 32-bit, SP1

[Patricia B]

Hello,

I have a few questions to better understand the behavior you are reporting:

-Does this behavior occur on the Functions and Control pallettes?

-Does this behavior only occur with strict type defs or with other types of custom controls?

Regards,

Patricia B.

[tgwowgt]

I have the same problem. LV 2010 SP1 f4, both in block diagram and in front panel. Right click, select "select a control.." or "select a VI..". The contest menu disappear and nothing happen.

My OS is XP SP3 with all update

[Paul-B]

Hello Jim,

I am unable to replicate this issue on my end using the same operating system as well as LabVIEW 2010 SP1 and 2011 using your .ctl file. I will look further into this issue and get back to you as soon as I determine anything.

Thanks,

[jfischer]

I apologize for not replying sooner to your questions.

> -Does this behavior occur on the Functions and Control pallettes? 

Yes.

> -Does this behavior only occur with strict type defs or with other types of custom controls?

It happens with all user-defined controls (controls, typedefs, strict typedefs).

I created a short video that demonstrates this behavior:

http://youtu.be/jhglZuAKXVk

Jim

[tgwowgt]

The problem is also in labview 2010, but with windows 7 seems work fine.

Reassuming: the problem seems to be related with windows XP...

And only if you put the control directly, with "Insert here" work fine!

[jfischer]

The problem is not limited to XP hosts. As I stated in my original post, the computers I'm using that exhibit this behavior are all running Windows 7 Enterprise (x64) with SP1.

Jim

[Paul-B]

Hello Jim,

I am currently trying to replicate this issue on an XP machine because I can not replicate this on a Windows 7 64-bit machine, can you try to replicate this on any other machine.

[jfischer]

Just now I tried creating and using controls on five different computers, each running Windows 7 Enterprise x64 w/ SP1.

On three of the systems the problem did not occur; I was able to place a user-defined control on the front panel using the "Select a control..." option on the controls palette.

On two of the systems the problem still occurs. Upon further investigation, however, I learned that the hard drives in these two systems were cloned from a "master" hard drive image the IT department created. So I'm guessing there's some bad mojo on the master hard drive image, and that's what's caused this problem to show up on these two systems (and others).

So for now, I'm just going to put up with having to use the old "drag-and-drop" method for placing user-defined controls on the VIs. Thanks for your feedback and assistance with this.

Jim