Is there a way to assign the TestStand User Components Directory other than the default one?

[HCL]

If this is possible, it will simplify the test station setup by placing the user components onto a file server instead of having the test station owns its copy.

[Marcela Maldonado]

You can do this by configuring the station's search directories. Go to the configure menu and select search directories. Notice that the user components directory and the NI components directory are listed. TestStand searches for files in the User Components directory before searching in the NI directory since the user directory is listed before the NI directory.

What you can do is add another directory with the path that you want (could be somewhere in the network) and move the new entry to up before the user components folder.

Click the Add button, browse to the directory and click O.K. Check the serach subdirectories checkbox. Select your new entry and click the Move Up button several times until you erach the position before the user directory
.

This settings are save in TestExec.ini under ...\TestStand\cfg\ you can distribute this file to all your stations if you want to avoind configuring each station.

I hope this helps,

Marcela.

[HCL]

Thanks for providing the answer. Yes, for general file search, adding the serch path would work well. However, some special purpose directories such as the icon directory does not work using this approach. For example, if I want the TestStand engine to load icons for my custom step types from a directory other than the default icon directory, using the search directory trick won't work. TestStand only searches specific paths for icons.

HCL.

[Marcela Maldonado]

Hi!

I looked into what you said and I was able to see the same problem. TestStand looks for icons in the user components directory or in the ni components directory. Adding directories in the search directories doesn't help. In the search directories utilities the user components directory can not be modified. I see exactly what you are saying, but I don't know how to change the path. I looked in the ini files but didn't saw anything there.

I don't see a way of doing specifically what you need to do. Maybe someone at NI can help out. Let us know if you find anything.

Good luck,
Marcela.

[Shannon R]

Marcela and HCL,

TestStand only searches for icons in the default \Components\NI\Icons and \Components\User\Icons directories. Since these configurations are built in to the Sequence Editor Development Environment, there is no way to configure the search directories to look in a directory other than the Icons directory.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Regards,
Shannon Rariden
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[HCL]

So is it possible in the future releases of TestStand that you can consider adding this feature?
From the Mfg floor test deployment point of view, it will greatly simplify the test deployment if the TestStand engines on all test stations can load files such as icons (all user components) and user.ini/type palelles (some CFG files) from a shared server.

Thanks,
HCL.

[Shannon R]

HCL,

You have a good point in that it would make networked systems much easier to coordinate. I will let R&D know of your suggestion. Unfortunately, I cannot say whether or not this particular feature will be part of a future release. Thanks for the suggestions.

Regards,
Shannon

[OmarGator]

I would like to see the icon stored with the step type code in one file.

[Chris_G.]

Hello OmarGator,

Thank you for posting on the NI Discussion Forums.  I am assuming that you have a custom step type with a default icon assigned to it, and you would like to see the icon saved with the custom step type, instead of having its own space in memory and being “linked” to the step.  As it is right now, there is no other way to assign a default icon to a custom step other than going to the properties dialogue for the step by right-clicking on the step in MyTypes.ini and selecting Properties…, and then on the General tab, selecting an icon from the Designate an Icon pull-down menu (which will be grayed out if you do not have a check mark placed in the box next to it).  The icons in this menu populate from the <TestStand>\Components\Icons directory and/or the <TestStand Public>\Components\Icons directory.  For information on creating your own icon to use within TestStand, check out the KnowledgeBase article Creating Icons for Use in TestStand. 

You can also change an individual step’s icon within a client sequence file by selecting the step, going to the Properties tab and in the General  category, selecting an icon from the Icon pull-down menu.  This gives you a choice of the same list of icons as mentioned above, and only changes the icon for that particular instance of the step.

The reason that icons and steps are stored individually is so that (1) the user has the freedom to choose what icon they would like to associate with a step type, and (2) each step can be matched with any of the icons in the icon directories (modularity is KEY in TestStand).  However, if you would like to see the icons stored with the step types in a single file, then I would encourage you to make a product suggestion at our Product Suggestion Center.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Varaprasath]

Is this feature still not supported.

I am facing the same issue, We have got more than 30 Test Developers using TestStand to develope TestSequence, If I cannot change the default search directory from where the icon is loaded. It will be very hard for us to include a custom icon for our step.

Updating and changing the icon from a server is almost not possible, since every one have to keep their own copy. If they are not placing the icon the TestStand will push an error stating icon file not found.

Synchronizing among 30 Developers is more complex