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My Big Book of Grievances and Bugs concerning the new 3D Surface

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Message 41 of 54
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An old, and two new CAR's for this beast:

 

1)            The Pan Function – This issue has already been filed to R&D under

Corrective Action Report (CAR) #316604.  It may be corrected in a future version of LabVIEW.

2)            Coloring the Graph Legend and Toolbox transparent – I recreated this

issue and I filed a new CAR under #353793.

3)            Cursor doesn’t stay snapped to the surface when its position is

programmatically altered – I recreated this issue and I filed a new CAR under #353796.

 

Thanks Jared at NI Support! 

 

QFang
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CLD LabVIEW 7.1 to 2016
Message 42 of 54
(1,895 Views)

In about a day and a half, I have duplicated pretty much all of the functionality that I suffered to implement using the "new" 3D surface xControl using the old ActiveX ComponentWorkds 3D tools.... O-M-G so much better!! I feared it would be a mess due to some poorly constructed ActiveX interfaces, but it was pretty painless! (Some ActiveX ocx things I've used in the past from 3rd party vendors, you have to dig down like 6 layers of nested references to get to the methods and functions you want.. with no documentation and obscure names.. not so with this one!)

 

While working with it, I found a PDF from 1999 talks about needing additional licenses to deploy applications that use the OCX component (section A3 /pdf page 70)... Is this still the case, or did they get absorbed into the greater NI and its part of my development deployment license? -And on the topic, I guess I need to look into if I need a special license agreement or "about" screen in my application installers when I deploy comercial applications.. We never did at my previous company, but probably best to double check.

QFang
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CLD LabVIEW 7.1 to 2016
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Message 43 of 54
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There is indeed some hoops to go through to get it to work on a standalone application. I was not selling anything, just moving an app from one computer to the next without installing the whole LV package and I always managed to go around the LV screaming by providing the missing dll (I suppose that with the new installer options of App Builders you could add the 3DGraph.dll or whatever it is named to the distributed files). Just be aware that this may not be a legit workaround...

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Message 44 of 54
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I'm working with a support ticket at NI to ensure we are on the up-and-up with this. I will post here when I get the final answer from NI on this... though this thread is supposed to be on the new xControls so I may start to mix the thread up to much. Maybe I'm better of moving to a thread on the ActiveX component..?

 

I also got another CAR for the xcontrol(!!): CAR# 354173 was filed for when you try to drag a cursor to the first or last data set on the surface, if you are not very precise with the mouse, it will snap back to its original location. I.e. if you overshoot the surface at all, instead of sticking to the first (or last) data set, it will revert back to the original position.. 

 

(Also, I started a new thread asking about converting from LabVIEW timestamp format to ActiveX time format... I'm hoping someone has figured out a way to do this and correctly account for leap-years etc... "activeX cw graph3D time format question".)

QFang
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CLD LabVIEW 7.1 to 2016
Message 45 of 54
(1,861 Views)

@QFang wrote:

...I suffered to implement using the "new" 3D surface xControl using the old ActiveX ComponentWorkds 3D tools.... O-M-G so much better!! I ...


 

Nice work Q!

 

Since you have gone with the ActiveX version, you also get the added feature of being able to export a style sheet tht can be inserte as an activeX object in documents so you can pan and zoom the image in a PowerPoint presentation.

 

See this thread to see how.

 

Let's see how long the "new" version takes to get that same feature. Smiley Frustrated

 

Ben

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Message 46 of 54
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Thanks Ben. I'm pretty much out of the woods for now (just need to figure out the time-format for my y-axis) then I'm all good.

 

As far as the "new" controls NI have, they are dead to me. I will never touch them again (in at least 2 major releases). If/when I need more than this as far as 3D goes, I will look at the MeshViz from VSG (google is your friend). Its prizy, but if you have gobs of data and expect a lot out of your 3D renderings, I think this is about as good as you can get. . I'm going to get an eval later this summer to play with the integration with LabVIEW (which is non-existent and will be a fun DLL adventure).

 

One last thing, I keep seeing mentioned that you need to hold this key or that key to rotate and zoom the ActiveX component... on my computer, once I click the container (to make it active) I can rotate by left click and hold, zoom by mouse wheel, and the only thing I need the keyboard for is when I want to pan.. 🙂 

QFang
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CLD LabVIEW 7.1 to 2016
Message 47 of 54
(1,848 Views)

@QFang wrote:

Thanks Ben. I'm pretty much out of the woods for now (just need to figure out the time-format for my y-axis) then I'm all good.

 

As far as the "new" controls NI have, they are dead to me. I will never touch them again (in at least 2 major releases). If/when I need more than this as far as 3D goes, I will look at the MeshViz from VSG (google is your friend). Its prizy, but if you have gobs of data and expect a lot out of your 3D renderings, I think this is about as good as you can get. . I'm going to get an eval later this summer to play with the integration with LabVIEW (which is non-existent and will be a fun DLL adventure).

 

One last thing, I keep seeing mentioned that you need to hold this key or that key to rotate and zoom the ActiveX component... on my computer, once I click the container (to make it active) I can rotate by left click and hold, zoom by mouse wheel, and the only thing I need the keyboard for is when I want to pan.. 🙂 


 

So far I think the reaction to the new version seems to be abou thte same.... a serious disappointment.

 

Tim,

 

Are you still monitoring this thread?

 

The 3D graphs like the State Diagram Editor and The tag Engine that used to ship with BridgeVIEW all seems to suffer from about the same problem.

 

1) Package is shceduled for an upgrade.

 

2) New developers are not aware of the functionality and operation of the old version and implement the new version and leave out what they don't know about.

 

3) THe new version is used to replace the old one with litle or poor testing.

 

4) The end users is screwed.

 

Any wonder why I "roll-my-own" so often?

 

These observations are an indication of a systemic problem. No CAR is going to fix this or prevent it from happening again.

 

R&D should re-evaluate how they approach replacing old components with new one.

 

If it is not addressed it is only a matter of time until it happens again.

 

 

Ben

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Message 48 of 54
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Ben wrote:

Tim,

 

Are you still monitoring this thread?


Yes, but I don't think you were talking to me.

--
Tim Elsey
Certified LabVIEW Architect
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Message 49 of 54
(1,837 Views)

@elset191 wrote:

Ben wrote:

Tim,

 

Are you still monitoring this thread?


Yes, but I don't think you were talking to me.


 

You are correct.

 

I should have written "Tim W" the NI engineer that stated he was monitoring this thread.

 

Ben

 

Retired Senior Automation Systems Architect with Data Science Automation LabVIEW Champion Knight of NI and Prepper LinkedIn Profile YouTube Channel
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Message 50 of 54
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