jcarmody

LabVIEW stopped crashing for me when I upgraded to 2012. 2011 was HORRIBLE...

You've probably even considered writing your own diagram clean-up utility, haven't you? Admitting you have a problem is the first step to a cure. Hi. My name is Jim and I'm obsessive about a clean block diagram. <everyone> Hi, Jim! Here's one of my symptoms, manifested as a Quick Drop plugin.

I've been struggling with getting started in AOD and I think back to my early days of learning LabVIEW, then even earlier to when I took a stab at Java. First, Java... I wanted to write a program that would descipher our products' "intelligent" part numbers and build a BOM from a database of parts and rules that I'd fill based on assembly drawings. My first attempt had one main() method that was several pages long that did everything in the same manner my BASIC programs would have done them. I took a Java class at a community college shortly after and a light bulb turned on and my BOM program became a bunch of neat little objects creating arrays of other neat little objects that all did their own things as neatly as you'd please. That course I took made all the difference in the world. Now, LabVIEW... I left one job to work for an Alliance member company and started on a Monday. By Wednesday I was wondering if I hadn't made a horrible mistake because I was struggling with my first LabVIEW assignment. Anyway, I eventually managed to "understand" State Machines and I built a controlling an automated assembly process. You should see the code! Anyway, I continued working with what I thought I knew and was completely floored when the JKI State Machine template was released to the world a few years later. I remember commenting that I was surprised that the company that "taught" me LabVIEW didn't have a State Machine template to use and I still cringe whenever I have to support some of the older stuff I wrote. I learned a lot seeing and discussing that framework. That made a huge impact on my productivity and performance as a LabVIEW developer. Finally, Actors. I'm confident that I could develop my own interpretation of an Actor Framework that would "work", but I'm worried that I'd make a lot of mistakes similar to those I made learning State Machines. Without a semester-long class (like my Java experience) or a ready-made template (à la the JKI SM), I'm not confident that I'd become proficient any time soon. And even then, I'd have to support production software developed while learning the hard way. Answers: 1) b 2) b, c, g (command pattern) 3) I would hope to be able to be able to begin an actor-oriented project shortly after.

I just finished watching the presentation and was pleased that I understood what you were saying. I'm neither advanced nor an architect (as in "LAVA"), but I lurk around here, and I thought I'd add a CLD's opinion. After seeing the presentation I am more confident that I can develop an Actor Oriented Design for a project I have in mind but, as has been said before, I'd like to have some code to study. It wasn't needed in the presentation, but a slide at the end with a link to example code would be nice. Someone might suggest that I look at the Actor Framework project templates that ship with LabVIEW... I'd suggest that I can't understand them as well as I could your four-loop, multiple-monitor example from the presentation. Kudos and thanks for sharing! Jim

I didn't get that impression.

I'm glad you got what you needed, but you ignored the first paragraph in my previous post.

You don't use the auto-indexing feature of the outer For loop and the inner For loop isn't doing anything. If you right-click on the pink tunnel on the left edge of the loop and select 'Enable Indexing', you'll be able to remove the 'Array Size' and 'Index Array'. I see you edited your post since I last looked at it. Here's what I've done:

Upload what you've done and we can help you along. Here's a hint to get two columns out of the 'Difference'.

What have you written?

Your instinct isn't very far-fetched. My first thought when I read the first post in this thread was to answer with a verse from a Monty Python skit.

I remember when my friend got an Atari game console when it first came out; we went over to his house to play Asteroids. He was LUCKY! A few years later my parents bought us an Intellivision. I wanted an Atari . Sports games were better on Intellivision, though. Aonther sign that you're starting to get old is when your similar-age colleagues are becoming grandparents.

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

It appears that the original poster was stuck, too; having those files might give you a bad place to start. Perhaps you can explain where you're stuck and folks can help.

I don't know if it's helpful, but it fails on the third execution for me (32 bit Win XP SP3).

FWIW

From an online poetry contest held here. My favorite line: "A suicide bomber changed her mind, and nobody ever knew." On the Day I Became a Terrorist by benjamin haas On the day I became a terrorist there wasn’t a nuclear meltdown or pipe bomb explosion. There was a radioactive and over-fished ocean, but that had nothing to do with me. I am not sure what I was wearing, probably something denim. I didn’t buy white powder, fertilizer, meat, birds, or bacteria. I didn’t sneeze, scream, get sick, slink down an alley, or see the dentist. There were cops, but there are always cops, and no shots fired. On the day I became a terrorist the sun came up on Bagdad, Jerusalem, New York, Coney Island, L.A., the Mississippi River, El Paso, San Diego, Bogotá, Tokyo, Baton Rouge, Tripoli, Kingstown, and almost everywhere else too. I probably checked my email, drank a cup of coffee, and read the news. Someone made a paper airplane, and pretended it was a crop duster. There wasn’t a hurricane, tornado, swarm of locust, lightning storm,earthquake, blizzard, typhoon, wildfire, brown out, mudslide, or flood covered by the media. I drove my car and regretted not being on my bike. For me the clouds were still in the shapes of animals and cartoon faces. There was distant smoke, but if you ignored it, you could convince yourself it wasn’t there. On the day I became a terrorist I wasn’t subject to denial of service online or at a restaurant. Someone drank a car bomb, smoked marijuana, and snorted cocaine in a bathroom. I wasn’t stockpiling a weapons cache or plotting with my radical friends. I didn’t own a single vest. And I have no idea what was going on in the PLO, Tamil Tigers, CIA, Hezbollah, IRA, Department of Homeland Security, FARC, Tea Party, Al Qaeda, KKK, or anybody else. I talked with small number of people on the phone. I doubt I said the word “jihad,” unless I was talking about music. I ate a salad with home-grown tomatoes, and had a glass of port. There were children dying from the self-interested decisions of old men, and I did nothing about it. I didn’t cover my face, throw a brink at a window, do any looting, or judge anyone who did. On the day I became a terrorist bridges spanned, buses and subways ran, and still some people cried. Someone lost their grandfather’s pocketknife in airport security. There was drilling into the crust of the earth, and gas leaks in several apartments. I thought that power lines must have seemed like the industrial revolution’s cat’s cradle. And I counted the tiles on the bathroom floor, while someone else was held hostage. A suicide bomber changed her mind, and nobody ever knew. Something was so much fun, somebody said it was a riot. There were lots of flags flying. On the day I became a terrorist there was just the sound of rustling and pens dragging across paper, signing bills into law and silence. boom.

This brings up an ethical question I've had about the possibility of building an executable for someone with a student version of the software. What sayeth y'all? Is it expressly verboten in the EULA? Is it shady? Is it just plain wrong? ITAR!

This is what I use when I want to make something for the Tools menu:

I understand your first comment, and it works as long as I keep the Wait. Please explain the second comment.

Oh, noes!!! I must have had this, or a simliar, problem years ago that this Wait fixed. I couldn't remember why I added it, which explains the comment I put in later... Someone else had this problem, too, but I can't find the discussion we had. You may have fixed that one, thanks.

That was my concern four years ago yesterday...

Shaun's link doesn't work. Here's the Quick Drop plugin he referred to that does what you want, sorta... The navigation feature doesn't completely work as I lost interest in developing the plugin before getting all of the wrinkles out. It does a WHOLE LOT MORE, though, that you may like. I wrote it because I had Case structures with too many states. Those left/right arrow buttons do what you're looking for, albeit imperfectly. They'll kinda-sorta let you navigate through your history (that you've made using the plugin). It works well enough that I can/do use it, but it makes unintuitive mistakes. The rest of the tool lets you see all of the states, activate one, rename/move/delete/create... It's a life-saver when working with the type of software you described. It requires the JKI State Machine, but not their Right-Click Framework (that stopped working years ago so I converted it to Quick Drop). It only works in LabVIEW 2012. The link to the NI Quick Drop Community page is the latest-and-cough-greatest version.

I wish I could "Like" this twice. Thanks so much.

Here's an article that answers The Oatmeal's comic about Tesla & Edison. They're both interesting reads, but the comic is funnier.

I just got this article in my inbox titled To Invent Like Edison, Learn to Collaborate. It made me think of the reading I've done about Nikola Tesla and the suggestions that Edison was a thief less productive than history would have us believe. This quote, in a book by his great-grandniece, made me smile: I'll be he did!