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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

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The NI-VISA Adapter could present steps that would related to the VISA Interactive Control application (Write, Read, Write from File, Read to File, Assert Trigger, Read STB and Clear). This would allow a developer to create a sequence that checks/calibrates a test station consisting of source, sense and fixture loop-back elements with out dependence on a particular adapter or version of an adapter.

I admit that the IVI adapter is already available, but not everyone uses ( or likes ) IVI technology.

A nice feature of reporting is the ability to form the report file pathname using an expression. However, since the path is resolved before the client Sequence file is executed, you cannot use properties populated in the client sequence file as part of the report pathname. Currently the only way to accomplish this without modifying the model or reportOptions callback is by including the <UUTStatus> macro in the path expression, which enables a portion of the process model which copies the report to a new path based on the result of the UUT:

I propose that we add an option to force the report path to be re-evaluated after the client sequence to allow users to include properties evaluated in the client sequence file in the report file path without needing to include the <UUTStatus> macro. (basically exposing the ReportOptions.NewFileNameForEachUUTStatus property in the dialog)

The "Report Options" dialog box provides a lot of flexibilty in the way reports are generated for sequences executing under the Batch model. A new report can be generated for each UUT, for each socket, etc. One option that appears to be lacking, is to flat out not generate a Batch Report. Doing a brief search, I found at two other folks who were trying to do the same thing:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Disable-Batch-Report-TestStand-2014/td-p/3091476

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/How-do-I-disable-batch-report-in-the-batch-model/td-p/238387

Suggest adding another check box to the Report File Pathname on the Report Options dialog box to disable batch reports.

Since not every path on the hard drive can be in the drop down list, and some may be higher up in the tree from paths that are in the drop down list (and some may not be there at all) it would be great if we could specify relative paths and/or environment variables.

For example:

TestStand Application Data (for Windows 7) = "C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\TestStand". But, I want to install a file structure starting at "C:\ProgramData". Currently, my only options are to write a custom command to copy the files over after install to some other directory that's in the combo box. But this isn't great because things can be easily left behind on uninstall.

With a relative path, I could specify the subdirectory of to be "..\.." and with Windows environment variable support, I could specify %ALLUSERSPROFILE%. Either would take me to "C:\ProgramData".

Having tried both of these in TS2010sp1 installer builds, neither of these seem to be supported, and it would be awesome if they were in the future.

Thanks!

I was in the middle of creating an ugly expression that was parsing a string and building a file path from other standard file paths and realized that I can clean up the expressing by creating a few local variables. But then I thought do I really want to create these local variables in my sequence that only exist for the purpose of this one expression. Then I thought, what if I can define a variable within the expression itself, kind of how a variable is defined in C or something similar. It only exists during the evaluation of the expression.

The Search Directories.Insert method should only insert the directory if it is not already there.

The Method includes an index argument, if the directory is already there, then it should move the existing directory to the requested index.

While we were working on the shipping examples for DQMH, we discovered that the insert method was creating duplicates every time it was called. We implemented a work around that includes a for loop to check each of the items in the search directories list to see if it is the directory we are trying to insert, if it is, we delete it. Once the for loop ends, then we insert the directory where we want it.

You can see a video of the issue and how we worked around it here: DQMH 3.1 Only inserts the Delacor examples directory into Search Directories once

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You can copy the value of a selected variable to another element.

But you cannot paste the value into the selected element in an easy manner.

What you have to do is click into the selected variable’s value field and then Paste, but this doesn’t produce the correct result (for strings anyway)......

You end up with is double quotes!!!

Also if you had ‘Copy Value’ on multiple selected elements and pasted them then you get

So it cannot handle multiple selections.

It would have been better if you could have selected the place where you wanted to paste the value(s) and a new menu item became available ie ‘Paste Value’.

This way should also be able to handle multiple selections.

The problem with double quotes shouldn’t occur and should be corrected with the current pasting of values.

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It would be nice to integrate VeriStand into TestStand with a VeriStand Adapter.

This would make developing with TestStand and VeriStand much easier. The adapter would provide a lot of the VeriStand .Net api natively to testand:

- Deploy a system

- Set/Get Channel(s)

- Stimulus Profiles

- etc.

The adapter would be especially nice for integrating the new Stimulus Profiles in VeriStand 2011. It would allow for you to create the Stimulus Profile sequence and the Real-Time sequence. The Real-Time sequences would only be able to use a subset of TestStand steps, and would have to be different than a normal TestStand sequence because they are executed by the VeriStand engine, but the Stimulus Profile sequence could be a normal TestStand sequence.

The integration of the Stimulus Profiles would leverage a lot of features TestStand already has like source control, requirements, reporting, etc. Also, it would just give the user a much more intuitive experience when using the two together. Their test development would be centralized in TestStand instead of having to switch between the two different editors. It would also give better access to the parameters being passed into the Real-Time sequences at the TestStand level.

There are probably more benefits that could be realized by integrating TestStand and VeriStand, and this is a feature I would love to see as a user of both TestStand and VeriStand.

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Hello,

For the moment the runtime error handling can be managed by using ...

Runtime error options
Ignore runtime error flags
Manually, for action steps, by handling actions returns

It should be nice to add such a kind TRY CATCH block, in order to modify the error handling in a local section of a sequence.

TRY

Steps ...

CATCH

case 35 // Error code = 35

end

case default // All other error codes

end

End

Doing so, could be a way to handle runtime errors, in an other way that the global configured way.

Manu.

It would be nice to have some kind of Custom Step which gets triggered when a step is deleted from a sequence. Something very much similar to "OnNewStep" which is triggered when a Step is dropped into the sequence.

We may have an option, say, "OnStepDeletion" to detect the deletion of a step. This will be very helpful in many of the step usages.

The TestStand Flow Control Steps like "IF" and "FOR" use the "OnNewStep" to create an "END" step along with them when they are dropped. But there is no means to automatically remove the created "End" when the "FOR" or "IF" Steps are deleted from the sequence. The proposed "OnStepDeletion" can be handy in such cases.

I hope you all will support this idea as it will make many of the functionalities more efficient.

Regards,
Nitz

(PS : Forgive me if anyone has posted this idea already. I couldn't find any such posts)

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In some cases it could be handy, if you were able to convert a container you've constructed in the variable pane into a type directly from the variables pane.

One case could be, if you chose to store some settings in the sequence file, but the settings are dependent upon fx equipment or the product variant. It can be handy to have a variable with the settings, and an array of settings specific to various configurations from which you can choose. But the 'settings' container and the type in the array of settings containers, of course have to align. And this is best achieved by a custom data type.

Often sequences start out for one configuration only, and later on the need for multiple configurations occurs - and that's why I think it could be handy - if you were able to convert a container, already in the variable pane, into a custom data type.

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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

String value - No comparison

Add a native DateTime data type to the TestStand Engine

Ability to Launch Version Selector from Error Dialog

Add an NI-VISA Adapter

Define Variables as Constant

User Defined Expression Functions

Add some OOP feature to a seqeunce

Add option to force the report file path expression to be evaluated after the client sequence executes

Provide mechanism to disable batch report through "Report Options" dialog box

Add support for relative paths and Environment Variables in the Installation Destination for Installers

Expression Variables

Beable to pass parameters with the Sequence used in Post Actions

Search Directories Insert method should not duplicate a search directory

Step highlighting or tagging

New Paste Value

VeriStand Adapter

Try Catch block to handle runtime errors ...

Custom Step to detect "Step Deletion"

Add JSON string function

Create Custom Data Type from Variable Pane