Michael Aivaliotis

I would recommend that you read-up on FOR loops... The loop will iterate for the number wired inthe the N terminal. All you need to do is +1 to that number and it will iterate one more time. If you need to reset any control, you can use a local variable. You can use them to write 0's to the controls. Put the reset code outside, before you enter the loop.

I'd like to remind everyone that Measurement Computing and SoftWire is charging National Instruments not the other way around. http://forums.lavausergroup.org/index.php?...=findpost&p=290 It is also possible that Mr. Bailey is using this LabVIEW forum to sway public opinion his way. The fact that NI remains silent just means that they probably don't want these comments to effect their litigation. So let's not get our panties in a bunch. Also, if the courts and the legal system are irrelavent then what is the point of getting a patent? Why not have a free-for-all of ideas an inventions? Of course this could be another thread altogether. NO, I don't want to see LabVIEW dissapear from the market. Doing so would mean I would be out of a job, but more so I would lose one of the most exciting and fun software tools on the market. If Measurement Computing and SoftWire think they are getting some brownie points (freedom and the American Dream) then they should think again. Besides... I'm Canadian... eh?

No there is not. You can start one if you like!

I brought up this issue last December on info-labview and people from NI responded: I agree that the free support is a huge help to newbies and to students. I teach LabVIEW at a community college here. I used to always say: "hey, if you have any problems just call 1800-IEEE488 and NI can help". I used to say this to many of my customers as well. I sort of felt proud of this in a peculiar way since it was a huge contrast to the "pay by the minute" philosophy of Microsoft.

Yes, this information is all in the public domain. I just spent a few hours perusing the United States patent and trademark office website. What a treasuretrove of fascinating information :!: I found the original NI patent in question: United States Patent: 4,901,221 It's interesting to view the original screenshots of the MAC version of LabVIEW. Images. The Fluke patent is here: United States Patent: 4,849,880 Images Of course there are dozens of other patents that have come out since then that are somehow related both from NI and SoftWIRE. As I was going through the various patents I noticed that there were other companies with patents describing similer graphical technologies. I guess the decision on who sues who is decided based on certain criteria such as, can the case be won or not. There must be lawyers out there who's sole purpose in life is to read patents and consult there clients on who they should sue next. We'll have to keep monitoring this topic...

oops, I just discovered something else... . You can't delete the subpanel control either! . Thank god for undo.

I accidentaly discovered how to reveal the subpanel terminal. This terminal is usually hidden from view. Only certain methods and properties are allowed on it. Place a subpanel frame inside a tab control. Right-click on the subpanel frame and replace it with a sub-panel. Goto the digram. You will see a black terminal which is the subpanel. Another spooky thing is that if you then drag the front panel (subPanel) outside the tab control then you have lost it. It dissapears from the front panel but the diagram terminal remains...

Well, I tried it out and it seems to be fixed. :thumbup: However there is a place for both implementation methods. I usually use sub-panels as part of a larger user interface approach. I prefer my sub-panel call to be non-blocking so my caller can go about it's business. This is why I prefer the VIServer implementation. However from an ease of use standpoint the call by reference is much better.

I am curious to know how you are passing data to the sub-paneled VI right now? In any case, to pass data to a VI control before launch you can use the VI Server Method Set Control Value. I have attached an image that shows how to do this before running and embedding the VI.

Jack, welcome to the wacky world of real-time. I have programmed several real-time applications using PXI and Fieldpoint so I know exactly what you're going through. Your post is so timely for me since I am right in the middle of another RT system and have my own recent gripes. I didn't realize how much of a paradigm shift I had to make from standard LabVIEW coding practices. My first RT project was under quoted by about five-fold. Needless to say, I lost money on that first one. :2cents:

You can use the "lexical class" function on the comparison pallette. Be carefull, this operates on only the first character so you need to parse through each character.

You can try here: http://forums.lavausergroup.org/index.php?showtopic=46 It is a link to a codeless radio button. However, if you want to program this in code, you are better to use an event structure. You can make an event case for every boolean. When the event fires for that boolean make the others false with a local variable.

If you look at the advanced pallete in LV7 you will see the input device control subpallete. There is a VI that returns the scroll position. I tried running this but could not get it to work. If we could get this to run I think we would be on our way to solve the problem of trapping the scroll button.

Here is one way to do it...

Yes, well you don't really have to do it the way they show. I mean you can also just respond to that event. You will have to get the references to those vi's that want to send an event then you can respond to a panel close or anything else. The way the existing event system works in LabVIEW requires that there be an event case for the specific event you are responding to. You cannot dynamically register NEW events only re-assign existing registrations to other VI's or controls. Hopefully this may be added in future releases.

Just be carefull when using Match Pattern. Sometime you forget about special characters that are used in the regular expression input. See example: As you see we are looking for \b and can't find it since it thinks we want the backspace code. Of course this can be ignored by using \\b but you should be aware of this especially if your regular expression is programmatically generated.

This is a confirmed bug from NI support that was just recently reported. I'm surprised that it hasn't popped-up earlier than this. Create a multi-column listbox with about 5 columns and 1000 rows of data. Make sure you have 1 or more items selection capability enabled. Now using the selection tool (finger) click on the first row then scroll to the bottom of the list and shift-click the last row. This effectivly selects - highlights ALL rows. After doing this, LV hangs. At first I thought that LV crashed but eventually it comes back and displays the selection. It seems to take longer to come back with the more rows of data you select. Regardless, this is definitly an issue since no-one will wait 5 minutes or more for a user interface to respond. In all essence LV is crashed.

I assume you have seen the NI example called: Dynamically Monitor VI's.vi. This will do what you ask. It is a combination of firing events and monitoring panel states. The entire process is very fast and efficient. You can also investigate ActiveX events that implement VI callbacks. Look at this post for more details.: http://forums.lavausergroup.org/index.php?showtopic=61

:question: Here is an image of an example that will pass an event to another VI when a timeout has occured. remember to right-click on the event structure and select Show Dynamic Event Terminals Can anyone suggest a better approach to passing a timeout event to another VI? Please post any suggestions.

Yes, this can be used on any html page that you want to get off the web. Once the data is received you can just parse out the important content. I made a VI that gets the nymber of registered LAVA forum users. I attached an image that shows how to do this. As you see, once the html page is retrieved, the rest of the process is just plain text string manipulation.

Listbox symbols can be changed using the Item Symbols property node. You need to feed-in an array of numbers which represent the position of the symbol as it appears on the front panel selector. If you look at the attached image, you will see that the Item Symbol selector on the front panel is high-lighting the X symbol. This symbol is position 2 in the selector if we count the first position as zero. If you go to the diagram you can see that we just build up an array of indexes that select the symbol we want to use. A much easier way to do this would be to use the Listbox Symbol Ring Constant located in the numeric constants pallette. This way we can use intuitive icons for selections. Don't worry, I didn't know this was there either until 2 years of using LabVIEW. This is not clearly documented. Another hidden feature is the ability to create a disabled line effect by entering -1 as an item symbol. Don't try to find the line symbol in the constant. It isn't there. It's only visible on the front panel selector. I guess this is a bug or an ommision. One final thing to watch out for. Symbols will only show-up for item lines that have text in them! Enjoy.

I use Photoshop. Since I started using it a year ago, I find it to be the best program out there. This is what I use for the LAVA site. I used it to create the text in the logo and headers and the special button graphics on this forum. It really can't be beat. My most favorite feature is the drop shadowing effects. Whenever I use it I find it adds depth and realism t text and graphics. If you don't want to spend too much money and want a simple interface, there is Paintshop Pro. It is not so loaded down with complex features and capabilities but it does the job well.

I think this is a good demonstration of using graphic images to replace common elements of a control. This VI sparked an idea that we could add to the wish list. See how you have tiled several images to create a background? I think it would be great to have the ability to specify an image in the VI properties and let LV tile then automatically. This would be similer to the HTML tag in web pages to tile a background.