how to fill combo box strings faster

[mitulatbati]

Hello,

in LabVIEW 2010, I load an array of strings to the "StringsAndValues[]" property node of a combo box. It can happen, that this array has 65000 elements. The property node loads very slow. Is there any trick to accelerate this?

regards

Mitulatbati

[patrickpollock]

I'm not sure what your application is but I've did some tests and found that you can populate text rings nearly 20x faster than combo boxes.

[smercurio_fc]

Why in the world would you have a combobox with 65000 elements?  That is simply ludicrous. Don't you think you might want to reconsider your user interface?

[wiebe@CARYA]

Just ran into this. 30000-60000 isn't that weird. DUT IDs from a database for instance, that get autocompleted by the combobox.

Note that filling the strings of the combobox is NOT slow. It's filling the combobox with strings and values that is slow. .3 sec. for 3000, 27 sec. for 30000 items, this grows exponentially. 60000 takes 108 sec. When you stop the VI, the VI is 'reset', and that takes just as long.

The solution is to fill the combobox with just values. Then, when a string is selected, look that string up in the array of values.

Just don't select "edit items". It will update several times, and you'll be doing a lot of waiting. Closing with task manager and restarting is faster.