Wiring functional blocks that are far apart

[agill]

Being a beginner to LabVIEW programming, I have had my share of wiring issues and spaghetti code.

On more than one occassion, I had to wire two objects that were far apart.  They were so far apart that I had to scroll.  Whenever I clicked the scroll bar, my wire that had been partially laid out (but not connected to the other component) would disappear for obvious reasons.  So I tried using a mouse that had a scroll wheel, and held down the left click button and scrolled with it.  The wire still disappeared.

To rectify my problem, I ended up moving the whole functional block close to the proximity of the one I wanted it to connect to, connected it, and then moved it back.  Quite annoying, if I may say so myself.  On top of that, my program had some sort of sadistic symmetry, so I had to do this 10 times with 10 different functional blocks.

Now, I know what you guys will say: "If the functional blocks aren't close together, you probably have terrible programming style."  I hope that's not true, as I did modularize my code quite a bit.

Now to the point of the message.  Is there any way to layout wires while scrolling using a scroll wheel?  I tried all sorts of potential intuitive commands, such as holding down various permuations of shift, ctrl, tab, while scrolling, but nothing worked.

Is there some advanced option I can change, if so, I haven't been able to find it.  It would seem like a handy feature to have.

Oh, I don't have any sample VIs demonstrating this, so I hope my description wasn't too convoluted

[agill]

Oh, I can't seem to edit my posts.  I'm using LabVIEW 7.1 Student Edition.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Well, a good rule of thumb is that your diagram should be no larger than a single screen but put that aside for the moment. When you use the wiring tool, if you hold down the shift key, the window will scroll faster. You can also anchor an unattached wire any place you want by just doing a left double click. You can then use your scroll wheel or move the window with the scroll bar. Pick the end of the unattached wire and continue.

[agill]

Left double click!  That's the shortcut I didn't try!

Thanks so much! 🙂

Wait a minute...  The screen should scroll by itself, right?  It wouldn't scroll at all for me in the the vertical direction.  It does in the horizontal direction, though.

Anyways, thanks for your help.

[ian_fung]

Say, you have to wire between A .................................................................................................................... B

After clicking on Item A (using wiring tool)... do not click on anything, but move your cursor to & above either:-

Extreme Left for auto-scroll left

Toolbar for auto-scroll up

Vertical Scroll Bar for auto-scoll right

Horizontal Scroll Bar for auto-scroll down

till it scrolls to Item B. Click on Item B to establish the connection. Done!

Regards