how to reinstall ONLY Component Works tools?

[yafoteer]

My 3D parametric vis are broken, and they always return an unknown error.  It's clearly not a LabVIEW error, it's something from the ActiveX or other Component Works items ("(-2147417851) The server threw an exception. in NI_3dgraph.lvlib:3D Parametric Surface.vi")

Rather than track it down, I want to reinstall the Component Works parts of the install.  I don't want to uninstall and reinstall LabVIEW in order to do that. 

I already replaced the 3D ActiveX control (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cw3dgrph.ocx  (Win7)), but the problem remains.

Ideas, please?

[Justin__D]

Hi Yafoteer,

I'm not aware of any way to just reinstall the Component Works parts that you are talking about.  I'm assuming this is continued from another post, correct?

I'll see if there is anything you can do, but it might be in your best interest to reinstall.  Is there any particular reason that would prevent you from doing this?

Regards,

[yafoteer]

Yeah, I got impatient and cross-posted the request for CW re-installation.  I just wanted to avoid twiddling my thumbs for a few hours while the uninstall/reinstall chugged along.  But I need to get back to work on the data visualization vi, so I'll be fixing it the hard way.  Thanks for the reply.

BTW - is there any documentation for the CW controls other than what ships?  I had a question about coloring the 3D as a function of magnitude that took a couple of NI developers to answer, and they weren't sure it was right.  Turns out to be a simple fourth input (wMatrix) that has no control on the 3D graph vi, and is nowhere to be found in the help files.  Now I see that there are ways to configure the control for spherical and polar coordinates, with no documentation.  If I had that I would not need to parameterize my spherical data in the first place.  What's up with that?

And just curious - what is the history of ComponentWorks, anyway?  Was it developed at NI, or did they buy it from a third party?  It doesn't have the NI look-and-feel.

Ed

[Justin__D]

I'm not sure what documentation you have, but we do have some good getting started guides.

Getting Started with ComponentWorks

Getting Started with the ComponentWorks 3D Graph

There are a few more (vision, PID, etc.) if you are interested.

[yafoteer]

Thanks, but that is still pretty light.  Is there not something that describes all of the object's methods in detail?  A real programmer's guide, not a quick-start?

Right now I am still struggling with the wMatrix and color map - can't seem to provide a color map that has absolute limits - it seems to autoscale, even when I turn the ColorMapAutoScale feature off.  I can't find even a mention of it, let alone details about the method.

I don't want to buy MATLAB to do this when there might be a solution in LabVIEW, except we can't find the documenation for it.  Come on, you sold me this product, tell me how to use it!

[Justin__D]

Hi yafoteer,

I haven't been able to track down a lot of documentation unfortunately.

What are you actually seeing with the color map autoscale?  Does it automatically coerce the min and max values?

[yafoteer]

I figured it out, actually.  You can set the properties ColorMapValues and ColorMapColors, which makes it sound like a scale for the wMatrix input, i.e. the color of the surface indicates how far up the scale of ColorMapValues any wMatrix values is.  NOT!

The color map just maps colors to the values of ColorMapValues, and has nothing to do with the absolute magnitude of wMatrix.  It always "autoscales" the colors to the min/max values of wMatrix and ignores ColorMapValues.  ColorMapValues is just a notation and has nothing to do with anything, unless you do some work:

I wanted the colors to indicate an absolute magnitude, so I had to create an array of colors and an array of numbers (my absolute scale).  Then when I process the data set, I truncate the two arrays based on the largest value in wMatrix, i.e. I have a subset of my absolute color map, and an array that mirrors my data set.  Those truncated arrays go into ColorMapValues and ColorMapColors, and the colors come out right, and reading back ColorMapValues and ColorMapColors provides a legend.  In other words, I have to do what I assumed would happen if I turned the ColorMapAutoscale off. 

Check out \MeasurementStudio\help\cw3dgrph.chm - it is the closest thing I have found to an API.  As to ColorMapAutoscale , it says "Predefined color maps always autoscale, regardless of this property value".  I'm not sure what a predefined color map is, but I could not get the autoscale turned off, weather I used the default color map or my own.

So unless you have a real API or some insight into ComponentWorks and its wierdness, I guess we can close this.  thanks