Using mutilple screens in Labview

[Chrispy555]

Hello All:

I am sirt of a newbie.

I'm running labview 2013 with a cDaq9188 chssis with mutiple cards (9205's 9214's ect).

We are monitoring and collecting data and running a few intruments on a small water loop. The experimeter wants to trend a few instruments on a couple of graphs. 

Is there any way of being able to open a second screen to view just the graphs and close it when the graphs are not needed? What I would like to do is to have a button on the main screen and when I click on it, it opens a second screen which runs the graphs. Any suggestions, or send me a link to a few examples would be appreciated.

Chris Paulusse

[plyons.gks]

What type of architecture are you using?

some may consider it overkill but I would think it might not be too difficult (depenging on whether or not you've used queues yet) to do something along the lines of a producer/consumer setup if you already have a queue based setup...

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3023/en/

So I'm thinking the producer is whatever process is measuring and the consumer is passing the data to a sub vi that the consumer loop can show/hide front panel etc...

-pat

[johnsold]

Chris,

In VI Properties you can find check boxes to "Show front panel when callled" and "Close afterward if originally closed." By using those you can have a subVI which has the graphs you want and a close button. When you call the VI and wire data to the graphs, the front panel opens. When you click the Close button the subVI stops and its panel closes.

Lynn

[mikeporter]

As Pat said, it's hard to give an exact answer without seeing how your existing code is structured, but in general:

1. You want to create a VI that when launched runs as a separate process is memory, independent of the VI that launched it.
2. You want to configure that VI as a floating window so it will always be on top, but the user can still interact with the window behind it.
3. The front panel of that VI should have the graphs you want and update them from data sent to it -- I prefer using user-define events (UDEs), but the choice is up to you.
4. You will need to provide a mechanism for shutting down the floating window if the main application quits -- again I like UDEs, but your choice.

Mike...

[justme2001]

A simple but not elegant solution to your problem is to use a Tab control. You can place your graph(s) of interest on separate page(s) of the Tab.

[mikeporter]

Lack of elegance is the least of the problems to worry about with tabs and graphs. LV has a very long history of problems caused by graphs on tabs. Do a quick search of the forum for just the past year and you'll see what I mean. Graphs on tabs -- it is not a good idea.

Mike...