Michael Aivaliotis

I just stumbled across this thread and have some comments. I find queues to be the most rock solid feature in LV. Most of the time, when they do cause problems it's because I had an oversight and the VI that created the queue went idle so the queue died.

One thing that I see as a red flag is the usage of shared clones. Disable shared clones, rebuild it and give it a spin.

QUOTE (Phillip Brooks @ Oct 9 2008, 08:31 AM)

Should these forums show up in the LAVA RSS feed? I don't see my post to the TestStand forum, and didn't notice the SCC posts (quick visual scan).

Thanks for noticing. It's fixed now.

I've created two new forums:

Source Code Control

TestStand

Enjoy!

Thank you. Initiatives like this make me smile.

QUOTE (ASTDan @ Sep 24 2008, 05:54 AM)

OK here is my first LabVIEW Wiki Entry

http://wiki.lavag.org/LabVIEW_Books

I hope it will be usefull.

Dan

That looks like a good list. Is that ALL the LabVIEW books out there? That's not much.

As far as the rating system. I think rating things using stars is not very helpful. I think a better thing would be to read reviews from those that have purchased the book. So, feel free to add your review below a particular book listing on the Wiki page.

If you live in the US, you can help my son's small cub scout pack raise some funds so they can do some cool stuff this year.

All you have to do is go online to www.orderpopcorn.com. There you can place an order for all different kinds of popcorn. If you don't want popcorn for yourself then you can even buy a popcorn donation for the troops. About 70% of the funds goes directly to the cub scout pack.

On the main home page you will be asked for an Order key. Please use = tepys6d

This will assure all orders are placed in my son Alex's name and the funds go to the right place. Once you are on the site you will find all the items you can order located across the top using the red buttons.

Any help is always appreciated. :worship:

Hey it's Norm's Birthday. Happy birthday Norm!

OK, we don't agree on politics, but we all agree on geeky engineering stuff right? There's a cool new show that has a pilot episode starting this Friday on the (US) History Channel called History Hacker. The host is Bre Pettis. If you haven't spent the last year or so (like I have) watching Bre's videos on how to make stuff, then go here to catch up. It's always a blast.

History Hacker

The resulting reaction to my initial post fascinates me.

Watch Michael Moore's new movie for free on blip.tv

http://slackeruprising.com/

QUOTE (gleichman @ Sep 16 2008, 12:22 PM)

Who's bright idea was it to update the Report Generation Toolkit to LVOOP?

You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you try to build an executable. I just got off the phone with customer support call which included remote assistance via copilot for about an hour. The customer was trying to figure out what these extra folders were in his build output. NI_Report, NI_HTML etc etc. Each folder was full of dozens of VI's. His quote: "I never saw these before in LabVIEW 8.5"

This first version of the cleanup tool is just that. It's going to be improved. What we need to do is let NI know what needs to be improved for the next release. So far, every time I use it I have to undo it. I have yet to find a case where it does what I want. Playing with the settings doesn't help.

One suggestion is that NI look at clean code that Pro developers like us create and find the key elements that characterize our layouts. Then, they could incorporate those elements into the cleanup tool as predefined styles that can be chosen in the options. You could even have several predefined layout styles. For example Style A, Style B, Style LAVA, and so on.

I think that if NI doesn't receive and listen to feedback from us on what is considered a clean diagram then it will never be as useful as it could.

QUOTE (HChandler @ Sep 8 2008, 08:11 AM)

OK, a little more whining. My biggest mistake was trying to use the files tab in the project manager to reorganize my development space.

Every time I try and use it, it crashes the entire project!!

Actually, that is a known issue. I'm not sure if it was resolved in 8.6 or not. I reported it http://forums.lavag.org/Move-on-disk-feature-crashes-LabVIEW-t9040.html' target="_blank">here (and to NI).

QUOTE (Ed Dickens @ Sep 3 2008, 10:52 AM)

And you my friend win the cigar. :beer:

We came up with that over Margaritas one night and still sounded like a good idea the next day.

This must be a US thing because when I was in Canada my kids would call "Punch Buggy, can't call it back". Then of course punch your neighbor in the shoulder. Same idea different call out.

http://www.geocities.com/jaredperi/beetle/buggy.html' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Here's the "official" rules.

I think you should be honest. Even if it means leaving ini keys that are not supported like:

SuperSecretPrivateSpecialStuff=True

SuperPrivateScriptingFeatureVisible=True

I'm sure all of the LAVA members have those on. Regardless, it sends a message. I disagree with adding stuff you don't really use.

Also, I don't mind to have stuff "fall away". Ya, I'm reeealy gonna miss "just-in-time" advice. No really? No, you're serious? That one is an example of a feature that everyone hated, but instead of removing it, NI decided to leave it in but turn it off by making the default FALSE. What is the point? If you want to improve the Options window try putting it on a diet and only include stuff that has an impact. The Options windows is what it is. A place to enable or disable stuff and it seldom gets a visit beyond the initial LV install and setup. Don't redesign it, trim it down.

I just had to go through setting up a JKI virtual machine so I had to go through 4 LV versions to setup this stuff so it's still fresh in my mind. Here's my list of the LabVIEW options that should be removed and replaced with defaults (in brackets). I decide to skip the ones I consider personal preference since you can argue all day about that. These are a no-brainer in my opinion.

1. The entire "Paths" category should be removed (LV defaults).
   
2. The entire "Colors" category should be removed (LV defaults).
   
3. The entire "Fonts" category should be removed (LV defaults).
   
4. The entire "Revision History" category should be removed (LV defaults).
   
5. Play animated images (TRUE)
   
6. Blink Delay (1000ms)
   
7. Use transparent name labels (True)
   
8. Use transparent free labels (True)
   
9. Delete/copy panel terminals from diagram (True)
   
10. Place subVIs as expandable (False)
    
11. Show dots at wire junctions (True)
    
12. Show tip strips over terminals (True)
    
13. (Diagram Cleanup) Move controls to the left of the containing diagram (True)
    
14. (Diagram Cleanup) Move indicatorsto the right of the containing diagram (True)
    
15. Show data flow during execution highlighting (True)
    
16. Auto probe during execution highlighting (True)
    
17. Treat read-only VIs as locked (True)
    
18. Do not save automatic changes (True)
    
19. Enable Just-In-Time Advice (False)
    
20. Maximum undo steps per VI=99
    

So there ya go. Yup, that's a lot of stuff but if I had my way I'd chop some more. I'm being nice.

QUOTE (JiMM @ Aug 31 2008, 09:00 AM)

The info included with LV is pretty crappy (as usual).

QUOTE (Darren @ Aug 31 2008, 03:17 PM)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what JiMM is looking for is documentation on why the heck anyone should use the project (besides the obvious: "to build an exe").

Yes, it's a neat way to organize your VI's but an OS folder can do that too. One of the primary benefits for me has been the ability of a project to wrap your code in a project namespace. You can open two or more projects at the same time and VI's within those projects can have the same name but you won't have the problem of cross-linking. One word of caution on projects. If you decide to use projects, you MUST use projects all the way. What I mean is that the very first thing you open, to start your work, must be the project file, not the VI. It's the boss.

QUOTE (crelf @ Aug 30 2008, 06:54 AM)

Just so I'm clear - I'd prefer that the icon not atually be edited, I want the scope/re-entrancy/etc glyphs to be on a layer above the base icon, so the image information isn't destroyed by the glyph

I think the word you're looking for is "overlay"

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Aug 29 2008, 02:09 PM)

Feel free to remove this post then as it is inconsequential...

been in 8.2 world for too long.

Now why are you being a sourpuss?

Actually, I think that feature went into LabVIEW 8.5

QUOTE (crelf @ Aug 29 2008, 08:08 AM)

I've seen tag clouds that are 3D, but not as you might imagine: the font of the tag is proportional to the number of instances of the tag. It's pretty simple, but it's very effective.

This is the case for the LAVA tags as well. The reason that the fonts haven't changed (yet) is because there are not enough duplicate tags yet. It's still new.

Also, I'd like to mention another use for the tags. Usually a thread here on LAVA starts off on one topic, which is included in the topic title (usually, if the poster thinks about it) and then eventually goes off into another topic. This is fine but it's hard to find the subtopic of the thread in a search. If you tag the sub-post with relevant tags then google search will see those tags and they may come up on your next search. In other words, you tags become part of the page contents which google picks up. So I see tagging as a smarter human way of adding keywords to our web content so that the next Google search will work better. Also, as mentioned in the beginning. Most posters choose poor topic titles. Adding several tags to the top of the thread improves the thread relavence to the topics discussed.

So, for now, don't think of it as away to improve the navigation but as a way to improve the searchability of our content.

PS: Another use of the tags is to categorize. For example, I've started using the tag: "Memorable Post". I think we should all tag the entire thread with this tag when the topic seems to be attracting a lot of replies and several passionate responses. In other words, a "hot" topic. Having topics grouped like that allows LAVA to link to them as a group later.

QUOTE (Ton @ Aug 27 2008, 10:37 AM)

I can't tag, the little popup comes up, if I click go I get a blank page. :headbang:

I fixed this now.

Can you try now? Also, how do the expressionflow forums look like?

According to NI's marketing, if you want to share code between projects, the best way is to use library (*.lvlib) files. At least that was the initial reason for libraries. On the other hand, NI changes their message every few months so it's possible that libraries are a thing of the past already.

Of course an even better way is to create VIPM packages.

QUOTE (ASTDan @ Aug 24 2008, 04:46 PM)

... Also another issue is how do you manage a number of different reuse libraries i.e. versions etc.

VIPM has solved this problem with the concept of project package configurations. Package configurations are like snapshots in time for the current project you are working on. They contain the package libraries that are used in your project for that LV version. When you need to work on that project you simply "apply" the package configuration and VIPM configures your environment with the exact set of package libraries you need to get your work done. So as long as you have a package configuration created, you can experiment with any library you want. You can always go back to the known working package configuration.

So, using the wrong library version for your project and risking broken code is a thing of the past.