Norm Kirchner

I have not heard any rumors or seen examples of a UI like this. I'm sure that you could utilize some .NET components to get this kind of if not close functionality, but I'm not sure which ones. To do a LV implementation would be fun but a very involved process. Due to the cross platform nature of LV, I've got a feeling that trying to natively support this feature would be a few years off until this kind of menu and drop downs are common.

A question was posed @ the LAVA BBQ regarding triangles and angles and crossing lines Can anyone fill in the details of what this riddle/geometric stumper was supposed to be. Please no on try to reply w/ any answers until we get the question straightened out. YES I KNOW THE ANSWER IS PROBABLY 42 and now we just need the question. I am very sad that I could not remember the details but I'll tell you 1 thing. if it weren't for jott, this would have been lost to the winds of time along w/ "Mary"

seems to be something related to a new release of LV and a big stink over the quick drop

Denial is the primary indicator of a problem the first step to recovery is accepting. all together now Hello my name is justin, and I love beer

Sorry Justin, but I just think it's time for an intervention

QUOTE (Darren @ Aug 2 2008, 11:28 PM) Darren, that was pretty sweet, but I will stand on my soap box again and ask why hasn't some poor intern at NI done voice command coding assistant yet? Your coding is so fast except for when you want to add an indicator, constant, or control. Wouldn't it be truly impressive to be able to have a some simple commands like those be able to be commanded by voice? Every time that i'm just cranking along w/ my coding, having to go 2 levels down on a context menu and the fact that it's not even at the top of the list makes that process Slow. Maybe something for next NI week or we can take the wheelchair demo w/ mind activated movement we'll do one better.

I figured adding a context menu for an XControl would be pretty obvious but I'm pulling blanks here. Anyone w/ experience doing this because NI search gives nil

Ok, I get what you're saying but what does the encapsulation give me or resolve (not being skeptical, just curious at this point) so that if I am one of the 90% I can determine what is the weakness in how I'm architecting it.

It's a simple enough structure. Let me lay out what I'm doing to see if this still makes sense. I've made an XControl which provides a common interface to multiple similar instruments. The data type of said control is of parent object Once a specific instrument is chosen, the data of the xctl is set to the appropriate child But if the instrument type is changed, I want to keep the parent data the same So this kind of structure allows the common controls between instruments to remain in the parent portion of the object while losing the instrument specific data once the instrument is changed. So although this may be different than what others may have done in the past, I think that's a good thing because that means I'm doing something new but I resist the notion that I'm doing something wrong. Truly the instrument class is the most common type of class that I hear about in examples anyways. It just happens to be that I'm trying to link a configurable interface with the object. thoughts? EXTRA DETAILS::The cool concept is that the XControl w/ the common config controls has an extra button that calls up an advanced dialog that is dynamically dispatched based upon the child object type on the wire. Another cool thing is that I also dynamically dispatch a VI that sets the ranges and disabled states of the common controls based upon a preconfigured control that exists in each child class. So in the end you end up w/a common set of controls that are dynamically configured based upon instrument, and yet still provides access to non-common instrument specific configuration items. ....it's my baby

Speaking of swag. If any of you know how to get your hands on more of the "justTESTprojects.com" notebooks that they gave out last year (clear front w/ advert shown through, spiral ring, graph lines) PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!! Or if you still have yours and don't want it, I'll buy you a beer in trade. I can't find them anywhere and I found the company that makes them but they only do big orders for usually marketing. I've been able to farm 3 of them from co-workers but my Book 1 "Diary of an Insane Error" is almost full and I fully expect my Book 2 "Tale of a Bent Wire" to be getting quite full as well. Or if someone from the company or NI has extras, I'll gladly do what's necessary to acquire them. Thanks

Suppose I should start using 8.5.....

I must be missing something....I would have imagined this would be easier. The long and short is that I have a wire of child class that I want to change to a sibling class while retaining the data from the parent class. I know that I can extract the parent information and push it into a new instance of the child class but that seems rather clunky and not the right way. Any direction please?

Has anyone seen if you can now work/develop with an XControl even if it's loaded on a front panel?

Well I broke down and did use the property saver and I have to give a big thanks to Konstantin because he saved me about 3 days on this one. I would still like to be able to dynamically extrapolate the full hierarchy of properties from a reference, but for now I'll press on.

The property saver was also something that I had recalled. But it looks as though this discussion might need to side step over into the Rusty Nails category. The reason is because although the property saver appears to catch most things, it's still a very constant based list of properties entered in and managed by hand (assumption, but code looks like it) And what I'm looking to create is almost the same thing but automatically extract all properties programatically. It is very easy to get the first level of all property names, but when there are elements that have their own list of properties it gets more complicated. Through scripting I can get a full list of properties for each level of the hierarchy(what I just mentioned) but the problem is that I can not figure how to extract all properties just using 1 property node. (instead of having multiple cascaded property nodes on a diagram that is interacted w/ through scripting

Actually it was your code Ton... well at least what I thought the XControl inheritance tool did.(i was wrong) BUT! it lead me to a great realization that I have created this tool from. By dynamically scripting a class specifier on a BD like you do in your code, I can extract all properties from any control (almost... still a few hurdles) and then copy those same properties to another control or save them all off to state data, which was what I thought your tool actually did. The problem that this new tool can solve is say you want a graph on an XControl \ but don't want to have to set the properties every time you open the VI w/ the XControl on it, rather you would like to have the state of the graph be saved w/ the instance of the control on a Front panel just the way a normal graph is. Now (soon) we'll be able to just save the control property information along with the control so that it can be put back to the state that it was previously (think, x axis scale and cursors, etc) SIDE NOTE FOR THE CONFUSED: If you have something on an XControl that you can change the properties of at runtime (graph, guage, etc) those properties will not be retained even if you save the owning VI after you've made the modifications. THIS REALLY SUCKS if you've made the XControl to be reused in a variety of places. This tooll will hopefully solve that problem.

Didn't someone come up w/ some fancy code for saving/copying all display properties of a control (Ton?) For some reason my searches are not coming up w/ anything on LAVA. (possibly because I'm nuts) Any leads?

I'll try to get through what's lost in translation. The only way that you would be able to have both graphs show the same thing but shifted on the time axis is to have the same ordering of the x elements you have 1,2,3,4,5,6 if you want to start at 22 then the second graphs x axis should be 22,23,24,25,26,27 but instead you skip from 23 back to zero.. why?

Since when did Ed Dickens become a t-shirt model

Is the operator limited as to what methods characters are modified/added/removed from the control? in other words, is there no mouse and they are using a touchscreen and numberpad?

QUOTE (GreatVIEW @ Jul 28 2008, 02:52 PM) Thats because there is none. The best* you could do is to catch each interaction w/ the control and do your own interpretation as to what has happened (like the drop or keydown)

Actually that's the best way to do it. If not you'll have to double respon..... wait no... triple respond to events.... no wait. Quadruple respond. you would need to catch key down drop mouse down value change maybe even more. There is no silver bullet to catch all events for controls as they are in change mode except to use the update while typing for a string. It actually even makes it more flexible as there are less restrictions on a string from what you can do with a numeric control.

What you would do is make it a string control, have it update the value while typing and within the brat translate the string into a numeric and do the same funcitons

There are many ways to skin this cat! XControl is one way, but you would be using a 298 piece mechanics tool set to hammer a nail into a wall that would work w/ a stiff shoe. I would reccommend making a 'Brat' VI (as in child... not sausage). I'll describe what this means in a minute. This VI would sit outside of any loops in your VI that contains the numeric. You would pass a reference or array of numeric reference into this Brat VI with the limits and colors corresponding Inside of the Brat you would take the reference and register it for the value changed event. Then you would setup the brat to respond to the event and change the background based upon the limits and colors passed in. Once you do your first one, you'll be amazed at the ability this gives you w/ a little work. And the best part is that these are some of the most reuseable VIs around. Now more on what a 'Brat' is. It is a Child (vi) that controls the Parent (vi) the idea is that you can easily drop 1 SubVI into your code and it does things varying from resizing windows or moving origin or changing the cursor and so on. For your example, it's modifying the BG color of a numeric on the parent VI They usually weigh heavily on dynamic events thus making them very light utilities that don't use much memory or processor. there used to be some examples on LAVA but I can't find them through the search

You keep talking about passing the Event Reg Ref... and I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet but you can not pass that reference around. The proper usage of it is to be used within the same chain of VI's as in same VI as event structure or maybe passed out of a subVI for simplicity purposes only to be passed to the calling VI but never to a dynamically called VI. If you really wanted to do bare bones on this w/ no events. All you would use is an occurance (IMHO) Pass the occurance to the dynamic VI and wait on it in the main vi. Thats it.