Why does my diagram look so cluttered?

[gjacob]

I've just written my first LabVIEW application that will be used to control instruments. It basically takes in laser light and tells how much light is in the beam at various wavelengths. I used some SubVI's, as you can see in the block diagram, but all of the other VI's that I download look so much cleaner.

Do I just try to make more and more SubVI's until my main VI looks clean? I kind of thought I was at the finished product, but I would like it to look much nicer, including a tabbed interface for the front panel. If you could tell me what my final block diagram should look like I think that would be a help too. Thanks!

P.S. hopefully it lets you look at it even if you don't have all the SubVI's, if not please let me know.

[tbob]

It looks cluttered because it is cluttered.  Lots of white space.  You could move objects closer together and straighten out some wires.  Move objects connected to the same wire closer together to eliminate so many long wires.  Simply changing the layout will improve the looks.

Also, change the controls and indicators from icons to terminals.  Icons take up too much space.  Comapre Trigger Level to Recording Window(s).  The latter takes up half the space.

[gjacob]

Alright, thank you, I will do that first

[Ben]

If you have LV 2009 the "Clean up Diagram button on the tool bar (far left) will give you an idea of how to clean up the diagram. ctrl-z if you don't like it. You can also select parts of the diagram and do the clean-up or exclude them from the clean-up.

What SHOULD the y look like?

Depends on your audience. in my case I amke them look like something the approves the invoices can understand.

Ben

[gjacob]

And is there any suggestion for making my front panel have a tab for inputs and a tab for outputs maybe so that it all fits inside one window?

[tbob · Accepted solution]

Allow me to make a suggestion.  Use tabs on your front panel to make it all fit inside one window. 

Tabs are a good idea.

[gjacob]

Thanks 😛 My main concern is that I have not used them in LabVIEW yet and I don't know where to find them, one of the palettes I suppose? I saw someone posted an Ubuntu user interface for LabVIEW but I did not know how to put my block diagram inside of that...

[tbob]

Look in the containers palette for the tab contol.  It is easy to use.

[gjacob]

Now that I have it so that it is all inside a tabbed panel, how do I make it so that the window does not scroll around and so that It is only as big as the panel I just made?

[tbob]

Your front panel screen is maximized.  Restore to normal size and resize the window to just fit the tab panels.

Your block diagram is still too big.  Lots of white space.  It can be reduced.