Compacter cluster arrays / tables with controls

[robijn]

Lately I was talking with a colleague about placing controls in a table. He showed me an application written in .NET or so which had a very nice table with all kinds of controls in it. The customer had asked him to create a similar application in LabVIEW.

The usual trick with these kind of things is to take a classic array, "paint" it transparent, add a classic cluster and also "paint" that one transparently. When controls are placed in the invisible cluster, resizing the array will result in a nice list of these controls, without any array or cluster borders visible. In LV8 the scrollbar on the array makes things even nicer !

Unfortunately between the array elements a gap of some 15 pixels is always present. That is an awful lot of space. The front panel starts to look as if someone did not have the time to complete his job and up to half the screen space can be wasted. So my colleague was not very happy that he could not make it as nice as the .NET app, not even by far.

Now if only we could resize the borders of the array and cluster to ZERO thickness, then we did not even have to make them transparent...

Joris

[steve m]

I second the motion on this feature! I have been using "invisible" cluster arrays for years to create control lists, and have always been annoyed by the border thicknesses. I used Active X scrollbars and slider controls in the past before the scrollbar was added to the array control. In addition to being able to hide the borders, there should also be a label list or column/row header property available for the array control to eliminate the need to create free text column headers (or use the caption) for the array.

QUOTE(robijn @ Mar 20 2007, 03:48 PM)

Lately I was talking with a colleague about placing controls in a table. He showed me an application written in .NET or so which had a very nice table with all kinds of controls in it. The customer had asked him to create a similar application in LabVIEW.

The usual trick with these kind of things is to take a classic array, "paint" it transparent, add a classic cluster and also "paint" that one transparently. When controls are placed in the invisible cluster, resizing the array will result in a nice list of these controls, without any array or cluster borders visible. In LV8 the scrollbar on the array makes things even nicer !

Unfortunately between the array elements a gap of some 15 pixels is always present. That is an awful lot of space. The front panel starts to look as if someone did not have the time to complete his job and up to half the screen space can be wasted. So my colleague was not very happy that he could not make it as nice as the .NET app, not even by far.

Now if only we could resize the borders of the array and cluster to ZERO thickness, then we did not even have to make them transparent...

Joris

[Aristos Queue]

Here is a .ctl file -- a borderless cluster. How did I build it? I hacked around in the debugger. But the resulting .ctl file passes all sanity checks and should be usable.

The control file is saved in LV8.0.

Borderless Cluster.ctl

Edited October 6, 2009 by Michael Aivaliotis
Re-Attached missing Borderless Cluster Control

[Jim Kring]

Here is a .ctl file -- a borderless cluster. How did I build it? I hacked around in the debugger. But the resulting .ctl file passes all sanity checks and should be usable.

The control file is saved in LV8.0.

Very cool! We've been wanting this, for ages

[uPDATE] it looks like it still leaves a 1px border

[Chris Davis]

I've back saved the control to LV6.1 but I can't post it from the computer I'm at, I'll try to post this evening.

[PJM_labview]

Here is a .ctl file -- a borderless cluster. How did I build it? I hacked around in the debugger. But the resulting .ctl file passes all sanity checks and should be usable.

The control file is saved in LV8.0.

Stephen,

Thank You Very Much! I Have been bitching about this for years.

You have earned at least one :beer: at NI week.

PJM.

Note1: Funny thing is I have a use case for this right now.

Note2: As Jim mentioned it is not borderless but I can live with one pixel border (<=> 2pixels separation between array elements).

[jaegen]

:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

Finally!! Looks like Stephen won't be paying for :beer: this year.

Jaegen

[robijn]

Here is a .ctl file -- a borderless cluster. How did I build it? I hacked around in the debugger. But the resulting .ctl file passes all sanity checks and should be usable.

The control file is saved in LV8.0.

Hehe, nice hack AQ ! This is might become one of the most used ctl files there is !

Joris

[Aristos Queue]

Ok, I edited my original post. There's now a second .ctl file there in addition to the first one, and I renamed the first one to reflect that it isn't actually borderless because of the 1 pixel.

[Yair]

Yes, very cool, Stephen.

How about backsaving?

I can do 7.1 and 7.0, but not 8.0.

[daal]

Ok, I edited my original post. There's now a second .ctl file there in addition to the first one, and I renamed the first one to reflect that it isn't actually borderless because of the 1 pixel.

 

Where is the original Post? Where is the second .ctl? ... I'm looking for the 0 pixel border cluster.

 

Anyone have it in there archive? 

 

Thank you

[hooovahh]

Okay so I don't have the original post of the 0px cluster.  But to me it was a little useless because it was 0px and you couldn't actually click it to select it.  This broke work flow every time you needed to move it on the front panel.  But what I do have that I don't see here is a 0.5px cluster.  It has 1px on the left and top border, but 0px on the right and bottom.  This means you cannot select the cluster by clicking the right or bottom, only on the left and top.

Top Left Border Only Cluster.ctl

[daal]

Ok if it's impossible to move the 0px cluster around, I agree with you it's useless.

 

My use case was an array of cluster and I need to sync it with a List Box. The 1px on the top should fit with my requirement.

 

Thank you hooovahh

[hooovahh]

Ok if it's impossible to move the 0px cluster around, I agree with you it's useless.

I don't remember if there were other ways to select the cluster and move it.  You may have been able to double click it from the block diagram, get its selection, then use the arrow keys to move around I don't remember if that worked or not.  Even if it did work any engineer taking over a project would get quite frustrated when they couldn't find out a simple thing like "Is this an array or a cluster?" and "how do I select the stupid thing?"

[Darin]

HTML link got garbled. See my post in Darren's nugget on arrays of clusters of arrays. Date was 5-9-2012.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Darin

[todd]

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Darren-s-Occasional-Nugget-05-09-2012/m-p/1984687#M655336

[hooovahh]

HTML link got garbled. See my post in Darren's nugget on arrays of clusters of arrays. Date was 5-9-2012.

This is still not the borderless one posted by AQ years ago.  This is also a 1px border.  If you put a numeric in the cluster then the cluster in an array, the size of the array will be 2 pixels larger in width and height when compared to just an array of the numeric.  The cluster I posted will be 1 pixel larger in height and width.  The one originally posted would be the exact same size because it was truly borerless.

[GregSands]

Is this it?

 

BorderlessCluster.ctl

[hooovahh]

Is this it?

Nope, also 1px on each border. 

[tnt]

This is still not the borderless one posted by AQ years ago.  This is also a 1px border.  If you put a numeric in the cluster then the cluster in an array, the size of the array will be 2 pixels larger in width and height when compared to just an array of the numeric.  The cluster I posted will be 1 pixel larger in height and width.  The one originally posted would be the exact same size because it was truly borerless.

 

I had found the same 1px border in my 2009 archive and I can't remember seeing a 0px border before.  (related post: http://lavag.org/topic/11002-cluster-border-thickness/)

 

Set Autosizing to "None" and make it the same size as the numeric, align the numeric in the center and you won't see a difference anymore.

[hooovahh]

I had found the same 1px border in my 2009 archive and I can't remember seeing a 0px border before.  (related post: http://lavag.org/topic/11002-cluster-border-thickness/)

 

Set Autosizing to "None" and make it the same size as the numeric, align the numeric in the center and you won't see a difference anymore.

Okay maybe this mythical cluster never really existed and it was a dream.  I must have been thinking of the Left and Top cluster I already posted, and can be found in the thread you linked to.