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Request for user input: Fast Terminal Wiring with Quick Drop

Hello QD Enthusiasts,

Before posting on the NI code Exchange I wanted to post this QD tool here for user comments. 

This tool is meant to speed up wiring of subVI controls/indicators to the terminal. Instead of maneuvers between a 9 by 9 pixel terminal and a control on the other side of the screen, this quick drop tool to describes a terminal at the control. See video of tool in use.

YT link (video is limited by windows screen capture. pop up menus are not recorded)

 

 

Attached is the quick drop VIs and support folder, these go in your quick drop folder if you want to try it out. 

What it does:

  1. [default shortcut CTL:5] Make Terminal 1.vi spawns clusters of Boolean controls that mimic the Terminal configuration, but larger. These clusters are temporarily added to the VI, labeled the UID of each targeted control. 
  2. User clicks a terminal configuration for the controls they WANT wired to the terminal. If no terminal is wired for a control, nothing happens.
  3. [default shortcut CTL:%] Make Terminal 2.vi removes these clusters from your VI while wiring them to the VI terminal.

Limitations:

  1. Not sure how to handle 'rotated' terminals without making four times the template clusters.
  2. Slow for VIs with dozens of controls when only one or two need to be wired to the Terminal
  3. Still musing on how to reduce this down to ONE quick drop VI. Suggestions welcome.

Thanks for checking this out. I have been using this tool whenever I work with LV and wanted to see if it can help anyone and how I can improve it!

________/~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~\________
Certified delinquent LabVIEW developer. Recertifying at next NI Days
Message 1 of 13
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Love it! Great idea!

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Message 2 of 13
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The video looks promising, but the plugin errors out when used. It looks like you didn't include a 'Make_Terminal_Support' folder in your zip file.

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Message 3 of 13
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drat. grabbed wrong support folder in .zip. Fixed and edited original post, also attaching here.

________/~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~\________
Certified delinquent LabVIEW developer. Recertifying at next NI Days
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Message 4 of 13
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Very cool, it works now. This has promise. I wonder what can be done about overlap...when my front panel controls are relatively close together, the tool is hard to use because the conpane overlays overlap as well:

c.png

 

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Message 5 of 13
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yeah there could be scaling if I was creating the clusters problematically (currently just pasting from a template). I use the ctrl+drag function to separate up my FP before launching this tool usually. 

________/~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~\________
Certified delinquent LabVIEW developer. Recertifying at next NI Days
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Message 6 of 13
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Here's a GIF of the plugin in action, for those of you who aren't able to view the youtube video.

 

conpane.gif

Message 7 of 13
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If I can create a cluster of Boolean controls with VI scripting rather than copying from a template, I think this would solve the scale of the terminal (for overlap) and the rotation of the terminal (and do away with the support folder). At least that is what I am going to do to this before uploading to the code exchange. 

 

The ugly part of the problem becomes "what is the maximum size (up to a fixed limit) that a terminal cluster can be created on the FP for all controls, where all terminals clusters overlap some of the target control, but no terminals overlap each other"

________/~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~\________
Certified delinquent LabVIEW developer. Recertifying at next NI Days
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Message 8 of 13
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One idea I had...what if you had a temporary VI that you created, and you scripted (scaled) conpane images on the front panel of that VI in the same relative positions as the controls on the target VI, and you ran it with 50% transparency sitting directly on top of the original VI? Then the temporary VI could have a 'Done' button on its panel, and after you clicked the terminal positions you'd click 'Done'...that solves the "2 QD plugins" issue as well.

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Message 9 of 13
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How about a plugin that does this: 

1. Click on any terminal on FP

2. CTRL + Space

3. type cp[0] or cp[1] or cp[x] where x stands for the terminal index on the connector pane

4. Continue with pressing the CTRL + Blah button for the terminal wiring shortcut ex. CTRL + X

5. The text in the CTRL+Space text box is parsed to understand which terminal you wanted to wire.

6. ???

7. Profit

Piotr Kruczkowski
Certified TestStand Architect
Certified LabVIEW Architect
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Message 10 of 13
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