Ring with empty fields and negative numbers

[pawel]

Hello Everybody.

During some work with RS232 I found in LV example some interesting RING definition.
One of them (see attached vi) has a negative number connected with the field, and the other has a gap between field 2 and 4. In both cases the field ... is not accessible.
How it is done. I tried to create other Rings and I could not find how to do this.
I have also noticed that in those Rings you can not add or remove any fields and the Representation is disabled.
How to create such a rings.

thanks
Pawel

[Ben]

Hi pawel,

I believe those are called "sparse enums".

They can not be created in LV. They have to be created in CVI (or the like) and brought into LV.

Ben

[Jonnie_5]

Ben's right.
For more on this (and pseudo methods of implementation) see:
http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&RNAME=ViewQuestion&HOID=5065000000080000003E2C0000&ECategory=LabVIEW.LabVIEW+General

[pawel]

Hi Ben

I see. That is even more interesting, that the controls can be created somewhere else that LV and imported and keep the functionality. Very interesting. I need to dig something more up about it.
The stratnge part is that when you create a reference to those controls, you will get a Ring reference.

regards
Pawel

[David Duffey]

LabVIEW 7.0 now supports sparse rings.

[Ben]

For those of us that are still finishing off applications we started in LV 6.1,

Once you create one of these can you right click, replace with enum?

Ben

[David Duffey]

You can, but it doesn't save the sparse data, it renumbers beginning at zero.

[Ben]

One click away from a dream come true.

Oh well, maybe LV 8.

Ben