Zoom block diagram

[TobiasAlte]

The navigation window is indeed helpful but I consider it a work-around and not the best solution. I imagine the zoom to enable me to select large portions of a diagram and move them around without having to scroll for example.

I am aware that implementing a zoom function would be no easy task to begin with - especially with the current display engine - but maybe that engine could change in general. Why make the display engine vector based? After all each and every "function" in LabVIEW is made of basic shapes that would be perfect to be vectorized. If the whole display engine is based on vectors than zooming in and out becomes easy to realize.

More over, you will always have a fine and crisp display no matter what level of zoom you use. Not to mention that display speeds might even improve as the engine could take advantage of modern graphic cards for the display process. Dot get me wrong, I don't want anything to fancy but I absolutely positive that such a vector based engine would improve the whole LabVIEW user interface.

[tst]

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TobiasAlte wrote:
I imagine the zoom to enable me to select large portions of a diagram and move them around without having to scroll for example.

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I can't check at the moment, but I believe the private methods do allow you to make selections, in which case, you could do the reverse of what the CCT (mentioned in reply #3) does. Personally, I think it would be too much work, because you would have to traverse the diagram to get the position of every object.

In general, it's considered bad style to have large diagrams. The concept is that you encapsulate functionality into subVIs. That doesn't mean that there aren't cases where large diagrams are required, but they are generally frowned upon.

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but maybe that engine could change in general. Why make the display engine vector based?

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I'm not sure this is a small undertaking. I think most objects on the diagram are bitmapped and have

an exact size. I'm not sure how hard a transition that would be. That said, I seem to remember NI showing a demo at NIWeek of how system design in LabVIEW would work and that did look like what you want - it was smooth zooming from the system level to the component level.

That demo, however, was just that - a demo of how things might be. It's not going to come out soon and even if it does, it might not affect the LabVIEW diagram at all.

[dsavir]

Hi,

On the one hand, the idea is to encapsulate functionality in subvi's. On the other hand, to save memory (work with large datasets) they specifically tell you to minimize the amount of subvi's. So in a really big program, you cannot have too many subvi's and there is no zoom tool...

Danielle

[Britoa]

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dsavir wrote:

Hi,

On the one hand, the idea is to encapsulate functionality in subvi's. On the other hand, to save memory (work with large datasets) they specifically tell you to minimize the amount of subvi's. So in a really big program, you cannot have too many subvi's and there is no zoom tool...

Danielle

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NI has a decent number of tutorials and presentations about memory management.  If this is the same as the one I saw, it will address your large dataset problems.  The end point here is that if you have really large datasets, there are some things you can do to reduce the memory footprint dramatically while calling subVIs. 
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6831

[Zbigniew_StS]

Indeed encapsulated data >>made<< problems.
At 12,1 inch display at 1280x800 icons are let's say...small.
I've seen some laptops with larger resolutions and still no more than 15.4''.

Diagram readibility is important.

Display tendency is sharpest displays with this same size - no more than 15,4''. When it comes to 1600x1050 resolutions icons lose readibility.
Conclusion/proposal is to integrate zoom,magnify possibility and Navigation Window.

So once again question to NI-Men: any plans or hopes?

Message Edited by Dedal on 05-24-2008 04:43 PM

[dsavir]

Hi,

Thanks Britoa for the link, I'll check it out, maybe I'll be able to solve some memory problems and clean up the code a bit...

Thanks again,

Danielle

[modicon]

While on the subject of Zoom tools, here's a much better version than Microsoft's own...has way more functionality, keystroke controls...and the executable is only 9kb in size..

[modicon]

..d-oh...! ... http://www.software4y.net/Hardware/mouse/7781.html

[RavensFan]

By the way, if you are within 10 minutes of your original post, you can edit that message rather than replying to it and creating a new message.  It is in the "Options" drop down menu at the upper right hand corner of the message.

Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 06-05-2008 10:25 AM

[dsavir]

Hi,

While there are other ways to reduce memory use, all the explanations also advocate large block diagrams. So I stand by my original comment - they put us in a catch 22 with large block diagrams and no zoom.

However, I'll admit the navigation window helps some.

Thanks,

Danielle