How to add custom tools menu items to LabVIEW OI?

[Henrik_Molsen]

In the TestStand Editor I have added some custom entries to the Tools menu. How can I make these menu entries available in my LabVIEW Operator Interface?

If I add the entire Tools menu by using "CommandKind_Tools_set" or "CommandKind_DefaultToolsMenu_Set" I get the entire menu including my custom entries. What I want is ONLY the custom menu entries because I do not want the user to have access to other Tools menu items.

I cannot figure out how to reference the custom items to have these included in the menu.

BTW: In this case the custom items are subsequences in a sequence file but could be any other types of tools menu entries.

[GajanS]

Hi Henrik,

Would you be able to attach a screenshot of what you are able to do right now (getting the entire menu including the custom entries).

This will help me visualise what you are trying to do and I can look into this a little bit further.

Kind regards,

GajanS

[Henrik_Molsen]

Hi GajanS

Thank you for looking into this. Here is a screen shot of what I get. The entry in the red circle is what I want only. This entry has been added to the Tools menu using "customize..."

(The screenshot is from FlexStand (http://www.ni.com/white-paper/11016/en/))

[GajanS]

Hi Henrik,

Sory for the delayed reply, I have been playing around with the settings and wanted to update you to see if this helps.

Initially I went to :

Computer >> C drive >> Program Files >> National Instruments >> TestStand 2014 >> User Interfaces >> Full-Featured >> LabVIEW >> Source Code

In there we could changed some of these settings in which you might have already done it but open up the project:

- Open the 'Top-Level VI

- Go to the Event Structure with the 'Menu Activation?' case

- Open up the 'Rebuild Menu Bar' - SubVI

In here you can change the tools and select the one which you would like to see, for example if for the 'Tools' I select the enum constant to be 'CommandKind_CustomizeTools' then when running the actual main VI, under the 'Tools' option I would only see 'Customize'. I believe you can yousing this method add your custome made entry into it.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,

GajanS

[Henrik_Molsen]

Hi GajanS

Thanks for taking the time to look into this. You are right that I can add the Customize entry to the menu the way you describe. By using the CommandKind_xxx you can add all NI-defined entries to the menues. What I really want is to add my own home made non-NI items to the Tools Menu. This is done by using the Tools -> Customize as described in the TestStand Help. On the production line I *only* want the home made Tools menu items to be available to the user, not all the NI defined (default) entries. That is what I am looking for.

Some background info:

What happends when you use the Tools -> Customize is that you change the file C:\ProgramData\National Instruments\TestStand 2014 (32-bit)\Cfg\ToolMenu.ini. If I open this file in Notepad and manually edit the file by removing unwanted items and update reference numbering (big hack!!!) I am able to create a Tools menu that only contains my own home made items. That will work for now but I will not be able to programatically control the Tools menu.

Wish for the future:

Create a "CommandKind_UserDefinedToolsItems_Set" that will include all user defined Tools menu items (and only these).

[AnandR]

any solution for this. Regards, Anand

[Henrik_Molsen]

No - sorry. I have not seen any updates on this.