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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

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Hello,

Many SW-Tool providers have realized that how comfortable it is for a programmeruser to work with dark backgrounds. Microsoft did it in 2013 for visual studio and now browser companies are doing the same. Unfortunately, I can Change background color of MAX and TestStand. This makes longer working painful for eyes.

An example of such a bakground is attached with the message.

Such a feature will improve ergonomics.

Thank you

Regards

Ricky

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Almost all of our analog measurements are specified in %: example

a Power Supply DMM measurement limit is 24.00Vdc +/- 5%

We typically have 100+ measurements like this in a project

Why not include it in the default step types as an optional selection?

I sure would use it, so would my team.

I agree that it should not alter existing programs using the default step, but I believe that this feature should have been in Teststand when it was first released.

I have run across this in both analog measurements, and the results from an ADC

Think a limit of 0x234 +3%, -7%

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I have noticed that the TestStand shipping examples are often overlooked when looking for ways to accomplish things with TestStand. This is not the case (as much) in LabVIEW and CVI, and I feel that this is because TestStand does not have an example finder. I would like to see some method of accessing the shipping examples through the sequence editor environment, such as:

Another problem with the current setup is that the only way to know what the example demonstrates is the name of the folder. This makes it easy to overlook examples that would be helpful.

I propose adding a TestStand example finder with these features (in order of importance):

Provide a description for each example (most of this info can be pulled from the sequenceFileLoad callback dialogs in a lot of the examples)
have keywords for the examples, and allow searching
for more advanced examples, provide a batch file to load all necessary components
Provide links to the NI community and developer zone to encourage participation

In order to keep file clean, sequence analyzer helps in finding "potentially unused variables". To delete such variables, each warning in sequence analyzer result has to be double clicked and then delete has to be pressed to finally remove that variable.

In many cases with large sequence file, there could be dozens of unused variables and in a single work-space there are dozens of .seq files.

Is it possible to provide a button or some option to remove all unused variables from a sequence file?

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It would be nice to be able to create a new sequence from highlighting steps in a sequence and performing a right mouse click, "Create New Sequence...", this would be a kin to Create SubVI in LabVIEW.

This action could display a dialog to give possible options such as, to copy the Setup and/or Cleanup group, Create in a New SequenceFile or in Current SequenceFile, the option to Move or Copy highlighted Steps. It could also include creating any locals and /or FileGlobals (if creating in a new SequenceFile) used by those highlight steps.

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NI has gone through a lot work to get the IVI Components integrated within TestStand as step types. I was wondering why NI has not incorporated the NI-DAQmx technology into TestStand as step types. I realize most TestStand developers would just create TestStand Adapters in the sequence step written in CVI or LV to interface to NI-DAQmx functions. Even the more advanced TestStand Developers would create their own custom step types to interface to NIDAQmx. I have just done that to where I have created a framework of custom DAQmx step types that I use as a small subset from all the NIDAQmx functions used from the NI-DAQmx library.

Currently, to export properties which are part of an array, such as the limits of a multiple numeric limit test, you have to specify each index of the array separately, like in the first screen shot, or else you get all of the raw XML, which is difficult to interpret and use.

This is both labor intensive and unituitive. . If instead we had the option to export the array with the "?" and have it parse the information out like in picture 1, it would be much simpler to use.

Regards,

Kyle Mozdzyn

Applications Engineering

National Instruments

Forgive me for the cavalcade of suggestions this week...

One of my favorite options in the LabVIEW development environment is the "Find all Instances" context menu option, whereby one is able to locate all calls to the particular SubVI.

I have long wished that something similar were available in the TestStand Sequence Editor. I'd like to propose a "Find All Sequence Calls" context menu selection when right-clicking on a sequence in the Sequence pane. This could leverage the Find tool, but save the user from copying and pasting the name of the sequence. (And save the user from configuring the search options to narrow down the results) It'd be nice to be able to define the scope of the "find" operation to either the selected sequence or all sequences in memory, but I'd settle for a simple search of the open sequence.

Cheers,

Mr. Jim

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currently the behavior of the date function is (1) get a short ("MM/DD/YYYY") or long form date string ("Weekday, Month D, YYYY")with nice easy boolean input, (2) pass it N local variables to get all the discrete parts and assemble it myself with a bit of STR() and concatenation.

could we create a permutation on this date() function, (does one already exist) so that I can just pass it a %<> syntax string and have it format the current date to my desired format?

specifically, I'm looking for a non painful way of building a "YYYY-MM-DD" style string for a report (or even just DD/MM/YYY) without having to lug around 8 locals and a lengthly expression, or call into a LV VI.

We have basic string format symbols available for the STR and VAL functions, why not for date? if anything passing this 1 parameter might save alot of folks creating a bunch of locals because they can just ask for the time item they want directly, and then VAL() the output text to get the numeric data if they need it?

it'd be awesome if the function supported standard DB format tags such as (http://www.w3schools.com/sql/func_date_format.asp) or failing that, was consistent with what LabVIEW's time format strings were.

Just a thought. Has anyone worked around this in a reasonable way?

--Elaine R.

The output messages are a good way of sending status messages from the test solution to the end user. However the control is not available as one of the controls that can be added to user interfaces.

Can this control be made available to be quickly added to a UI and linked to the execution view manager.

Also adding some kind of API interface to be able to capture these messages to a log file would remove the need to implement any custom logging mechanisms. If possible ability to open multiple file logs within the engine at the same time with each file given some kind of filter rules (for example Severity=”error” or ExecutionId=5). If logs had to be attributed to an execution ID then they could automatically be closed when the execution ended, otherwise the user would have to manually close each file which could get forgotten and TestStand end up with lots of open file references.

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Right now it appears the sequence analyzer has no really effective automation options?

I can use the command line to launch the Sequence Analyzer, but I really want to run this puppy headlessly against a codebase every 24 hours similar to how VI Analyzer works. Ideally, yes, I'd love a full API, but for the short term, would it be possible to expand the command line?

what we have currently is:

AnalyzerApp.exe "C:\My Documents\MyProject.tsaproj" to get the window open with the right project in it.

what would be seriously helpful would be to add: some sort of "-Run -Report "C:\Reports\MyProjectReport.xml"" additional tags?

In general I'd love for the tool to (1) launch, (2) run project, (3) save off file, and (4) close without further nagging on the part of a user.

Extra kudos would be given if it could generate a standard-out message with some quick stats, if someone was feeling really gung-ho. Perhaps a # of rules, run and # of errors & warnings found? I can just as easily rake the xml output, so these aren't required, but I am in dire need of a way to automatically _get_ that xml output.

If the tool already does these tasks than please feel free to say so? I've combed the help in the versions I have installed, and so far have come up with nothing. I'm currently shopping around for a thin ui-robot to get the job done...

Hi,

I have a table in file globals (2D array).

Each column of the table has an associate variable in file global.

For i want my custom step to run N time which is the number of rows in the table.

In each iteration, i want to take each value of the row and assign the value to the asscoiated variable in file global.

so, i want to have a looping mechanism in the expression.

I guess it is not explicitly present right now. Right now, i use teststand API to update the variable.

It would be nice to have looping in expression. This will improve my custom steps performance.

Regards,

Muthuraman S

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I’m trying to work with the tool Requirement Gateway. I started with some examples which are contained in install packet of this tool. I need to connect Gateway with HTML document and manage coverage with another HTML document. I managed to get from HTML document load the list of requirements to Gateway tool. If I tried to open the particular requirement from Gateway than the HTML document was opened on first page always. I can’t set the Gateway for opening the HTML document on particular place, when is described requirement.

My point of view is make some modification for better connection Gateway tool with internet browser.

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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Dark theme (background) color for TestStand and MAX

Add the capability to express limits in +/-% of expected value in all limits

Create a TestStand Example Finder

Remove all unused variable in sequence file with single click

Tool to create Sequence from Highlighted Steps

Step Types for NI-DAQmx

Simplify exporting arrays of properties

Add JSON string function

Find All Sequence Calls - Context Menu Option

LV Primitives in TS

Add ability to search for instances of custom data types

Date() / time() functions could allow for different desired formats as a parameter rather than returning N local variables

Make Output panel available as UI ActiveX Control

Option to store an independent TestStand configuration with workspace

Find / Replace Dialog popup the Variable Dialog to auto complete names

Improve Sequence Analyzer CommandLine to allow for automatic report generation

Review all idea Exchange and Update status

Looping inside the Expressions

Add HTML capability to Requirements Gateway

Create a way to use the find/replace tool to select actual steps in the TestStand sequence editor instead of just listing matching text values in the find window