Darren

As a result of the great "Config VI Refactoring Debacle", I come down strongly on DISCOURAGING any use of VIs that are not in the palettes unless you copy them to a new location on disk and use them from there. I'm pushing to have the Variant Data Type library added to the palettes in LV 2012 so that it is no longer under this interdict.

And as most people know (based on the content of many of my weekly nuggets, as well as my penultimate response on AQ's thread linked above), I often *encourage* people to use VIs that are not in the palettes/Quick Drop. I would venture to say that, since the config VI debacle (which occurred with the LabVIEW 2009 release), we haven't had any major upgrade problems associated with changed interfaces to VIs...our developers are more well-informed of the issues, and we have processes in place that analyze our shipping VIs for interface changes between versions.

Seeing this mention of the Binary Search Pt-by-pt VI, which I would never have found, I was wondering if anyone has a list of all the vi.lib VIs that are not contained on any of the default menus? Even better, menus that expose them? Or add them to Quick Drop?

Jarrod wrote a great Quick Drop Keyboard Shortcut that allows you to easily add a selection of code (which could just be a single VI) to the user palettes so it's accessible with Quick Drop. You can get it here.

User-defined menu entries in the File pull-down menu are linked to VIs created in the [LabVIEW]\wizard directory. Do you have a 'wizard' directory in your LabVIEW 2010 install?

You wrote a custom Quick Drop Keyboard Shortcut during the exam? That's the best!

I'm working on the scripting backend to the DSP Design Module that was announced at NI Week.

I get plenty of flak for using it so much (feel free to chime, hooovahh).

You get flak for using the LabVIEW feature that facilitates programming as fast as possible? How strange... I give people flak whenever I see them spelunking the palettes.

Like most, I came from text-based roots and I'm much, much better at typing than mousing around, which has the perk of not having to learn which function is in which palette.

Funny...I've only ever programmed in LabVIEW, yet I found mousing around in the palettes to be a huge bottleneck, as I know the name of almost every function I ever need.

There has been the option of loading quick drop during launch. I wonder if they simply changed the default to this option?

No, the default option is to still load palettes in the background. The change in 2011 is that we fixed some background palette loading issues that were causing some palette contents to never get loaded in the background...thus, on Quick Drop's first launch, there was still a bunch of work to do. In 2011, *all* the palette info gets loaded in the background, so assuming this all happens before you launch Quick Drop for the first time, its first launch will be instantly usable.

Do you have any experience or shall I make a test on it?

I've never tried it in a built EXE, so you'll need to test it. Let me know what you figure out.

I would like to write a code, what is able to find the ProgramFiles\National Instruments\Shared - Folder...

Check out [LabVIEW]\help\_exfinder.llb\get NI shared folder path.vi. It's password-protected (makes a callback into LabVIEW.exe), but it does the job.

...such an online reputation to protect.

Whose reputation exactly?

The "Get VI Version" App method will do this without having to load the VI into memory:

Anybody seen this?

I've never seen that. I'd replace the Event Structure if I were you. There may be other corruptions lurking...

I would like to get the CLD, but since my employer sees absolutely no benefit to having me certified I'll be doing it all on my own nickel, not to mention taking vacation time off work to take the exam. But after a bit of research I've discovered that getting the CLAD is listed as a prerequisite for the CLD. Is this really the case in practice?? If so, any idea why?? I can't believe it's just money-grubbing on NI's part (and I'm not being sarcastic). If I can pass the CLD, what's the point of the CLAD?

I can't speak for the motivation of the certification department, but the stated prerequisite is accurate...you must pass the CLAD before you can take the CLD, and you must pass the CLD before you can take the CLA.

I vilify Clean Up Diagram because it deserves it. How do you "improperly use" a button? There was nothing even remotely "clean" in what it produced; I can't imagine ANY LV programmer wanting their code to look like that. If someone hit Delete, then the *situation* would suck because that's what Delete is supposed to do and you might have clicked it when you didn't mean to. As it stands, I think the Cleanup feature sucks because it doesn't do what it is supposed to.

(LAVA ate my previous post, and I don't quite remember all of what I said...here's the short version)

Diagram Cleanup does what it's supposed to do on small, lightly-nested VIs, which should make up the bulk of the VIs in your application if it's sufficiently modular. On large and/or heavily-nested diagrams, it should not be used. Check out the whole story of my feelings on block diagram cleanup in this blog post.

The Resolve Confict dialog(s) are forced upon me occasionally when I move stuff around intentionally. That feature upsets me so much I have to go get a cup of coffee after 1-10 minutes of arrow-enter . Can we vilify that feature?

I too have been unable to resolve my conflict with the Resolve Conflicts dialog. So yes, vilify away.

It's been a while since high school English, but with that corrective symbol, wouldn't the result be "Wierd" instead of "Wired", which I think is the intent?

Here's an idea: could the switcheroo tool somehow be incorporated in the image for switching the letters around?

It seems to me that diagram cleanup is the scapegoat in this situation (why isn't it the evil kid who pressed Ctrl-S on code that wasn't his?). The scapegoat could have just as easily been the Delete key, the Backspace key, a case structure wrapped around the code then removed with an empty case showing, etc. etc. Once Ctrl-S is pressed after any of these actions, you're screwed unless you (1) have a readily available backup of your code or (2) are able in a future LabVIEW version to undo after save. Since it's not August 2011 yet, I vote for the readily available backup of your code.

The situation you described really sucks, Crystal, but let's not vilify a feature that isn't being forced on the user in any way by LabVIEW itself, but instead was improperly used in a special circumstance.

Looks like I spoke too soon. Based on some beta feedback, and after discussing the issue further in-house, I will not be including these VIs in 2011. Hopefully, we'll see native support for the error terminals on the primitives themselves in a future LabVIEW version (go vote for this idea if you haven't already). For posterity, here are the VIs I *almost* shipped in 2011, zipped up and saved in LV 2010. And of course, there's also the option of using the OpenG Time Tools VIs.

-D

timing.zip

And if you're looking to use the complex numeric data type instead of keeping the real/imaginary components separate, then use a Re/Im To Complex function instead of a Build Array in hooovahh's instructions above.

-D

As things are currently implemented, you must place your VI Analyzer tests in either [LabVIEW]\project\_VI Analyzer\_tests or [LabVIEW Data]\VI Analyzer Tests in order for them to appear in the VI Analyzer UI, or be otherwise usable with the VI Analyzer.

-D

There is a method of the Pane class called "Unlock Objects" that will programatically unlock controls on the specified Pane. It is a scripting method (so it's exposed in LabVIEW 2010, but not earlier versions). Here is a VI saved in 8.5 that has the method so you can use it.

Good luck,

-D

Unlock Objects Method.vi

I was able to unlock the control by following these steps in LabVIEW 8.5:

1. Double-click the "unlockable control" terminal on the diagram to highlight the control on the FP.

2. Drag a selection box around the control (as Chris suggested).

3. Go to the menu and choose "Unlock" from the Reorder pull-down menu.

-D

I'm sure you're probably sick of hearing the whole "You only got an inch and had 200 accidents! We have XXX feet and I was fine."

It's all about what you're used to. I've spent my entire life in central and south Texas. I have no clue how to drive a vehicle when the roads are icy, and I don't even try. And I'm not afraid to admit it.

...but then again, I can also spend the entire day outside in July when it's 105 and not drop dead.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

-D