TobyD

QUOTE (neB @ Sep 24 2008, 01:35 PM) I'm just curious what you mean by this? Is it against your beliefs to vote? Toby

QUOTE (LV_FPGA_SE @ Sep 24 2008, 11:58 AM) Nice and just in time for the Woot-Off!

QUOTE (Michael_Aivaliotis @ Sep 24 2008, 10:38 AM) Happy Birthday Norm!

QUOTE (NikkoPro @ Sep 22 2008, 06:31 AM) Here is one way to do it, but I'm curious why you want to hide the cursor? Most of the time when a user cannot see the cursor they immediately think the program is not responding and try to Alt+Ctrl+Del out of it. Note: This only hides the cursor, it does not disable it. Download File:post-8758-1222098840.vi

QUOTE (Nine @ Sep 19 2008, 08:39 AM) You might want to check out http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6183' target="_blank">this. Also, search for "solidworks" on NI.com and it looks like there might be a few tutorial videos or presentations on the subject.

QUOTE (liuman @ Sep 19 2008, 08:25 AM) You might need to read the buffer twice after each command. Many instruments echo the command you sent on the first line, then send a response on the next line. If you have your serial port setup to recognize end-of-line characters you'll only get one line per read.

QUOTE (jcarmody @ Sep 19 2008, 08:56 AM) I'll give my $0.02. I think Peter did a good job with the book. There are a lot of great tips that he talks about and I like the way it is all laid out by category (icons, data structures, error handling, etc.). I didn't agree with all of his style guidelines, but most of them are pretty universal. That brings me to my next point...Most of what I found in the book can be discovered on your own if you are willing to scan through white papers and forum posts on good style - or, like Jim mentions, spend 12 years figuring it out. The nice thing about the book is that it gives you all this information in one place. My only complaint is that some of the diagrams are a little fuzzy. Not unreadable, but the printing just doesn't seem to be as sharp as it should be for book with so many graphics. Although I would recommend both books (and have many times), I personally found LabVIEW for Everyone to be more useful overall for me. It hits on some of the major points of good style, but also provides an overall look into LabVIEW and what it is capable of. Since you are already a CLD, the first half of LV for Everyone may be too basic, but I'd be willing to bet you'll pick up a trick or two even there. If it is only style that you're worried about, The LabVIEW Style Book is the right choice.

QUOTE (crelf @ Sep 17 2008, 10:42 AM) Ouch man, ouch.

Thanks Tomi. You always have some good tips in your articles. I am still nervous about the idea of storing any company confidential intellectual property on third party servers though. I know a lot of companies (including the one I work for) have starting renting storage space because it's cheaper than having their own IT department manage it (or they have no more physical space in their server rooms), but it makes me nervous.

QUOTE (alfa @ Sep 17 2008, 01:38 AM) Is it just me or is the percentage of low level people increasing rapidly? I thought it was 98% but now I'm hearing > 99.9% Perhaps I'm just too low level to understand all of this.

QUOTE (souske @ Sep 12 2008, 03:04 AM) Cross-post from http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=355301#M355301' target="_blank">here

QUOTE (eaolson @ Sep 15 2008, 08:37 AM) I don't know about that. My mother-in-law tries to interfere all the time

QUOTE (jcarmody @ Sep 14 2008, 04:06 PM) I'd like to run that through diagram cleanup and see how it comes out (and how long it takes - so far I've been impressed with the speed)

QUOTE (crelf @ Sep 14 2008, 10:03 AM) Nerd

QUOTE (Tom Bress @ Aug 30 2008, 12:27 PM) Thanks again for the feedback Tom. I finally had a bit of time today to go back and look through my LabVIEW advanced course material and the Chapter in the LabVIEW Style Guide on error handling. I read up on the methods you recommend in the LabVIEW Style Guide, but I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the method I used with a functional global variable is actually very similar to the method used in the Advanced course material. Although their implementation is somewhat cleaner than mine, they recommend using a FGV that gets called in every iteration of the producer and consumer loop to handle any errors (either shut down the loops or fix the errors). Based on http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">this information, I think it's OK for me to post a brief excerpt of the manual for commentary purposes. This is on page 6-13 of the LabVIEW Advanced 1 Architectures Course Manual, May 2006 Edition (Part #324385A-01) QUOTE (LabVIEW Advanced I Course Manual) A powerful way to create an error handling mechanism is to use the capabilities of the functional global variable. The FGV stores the errors that it has received...You can create code inside the FGV that sends shutdown messages to the rest of the architecture if an error is received. You only need to send a shutdown message for the first error that is received. You could also create code that implements a routine to fix the error...When you create a shutdown routine, your error handling VI needs to clear the errors that the system detects in order for the common shutdown VIs to execute. After creating the FGV, call it at the end of every state in the architecture to appropriately handle any error that might have occured. There are some small things I would change in version 2.1 of my code, but I like the ease of the FGV and it seems to be a method that is encouraged by NI.

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Sep 10 2008, 12:24 PM) BREATH NORM, BREATH!!! I think most of us can agree that having this feature is better than not having it. My only point is that I really hope the overuse of this tool does not influence the slackening (is that a word?) of style guidelines. I see it as similar to PCB design software. Because I have limited experience with PCB layout, the auto-layout feature helps me out, but if I showed some of my layouts to people who layout boards for a living they would cringe. -Toby

QUOTE (Donald @ Sep 9 2008, 04:34 AM) I shudder to think what could become of LabVIEW style guidelines if people start to rely to heavily on the diagram cleanup tool. I will admit that I have seen some VIs that were so poorly written that the cleanup feature actually helped, but I have yet to see a VI that I would consider "clean" after running this tool. I think it can provide a better starting point for cleaning up messy code, but my experience so far has been that quite a bit of work is still required to make the code presentable.

QUOTE (normandinf @ Sep 2 2008, 09:10 AM) Michael mentioned that http://LabVIEW-86-Released-t11544.html&st=15&start=15#' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">here. It was fun while it lasted.

Even if we're not going to rig the study results :ninja: , I would be curious to hear what everyone's favorite ini tokens are. I'm more interested in the ones that don't appear in tools-->options. What are the first things you add after a new install of LabVIEW? One of my favorites is StructuresFadeToDiagramBeneath=True. I deal with a lot of code written by people who never learned the right way to do things and this helps me figure out where their wires are actually going.

QUOTE (alfa @ Aug 29 2008, 01:54 AM) Sign me up!

QUOTE (Dale_Cooper @ Aug 29 2008, 05:40 AM) Are you talking through the serial port (RS-232)? If so the commands are SYSTem:LOCal and SYSTem:REMote (you only need to send the capital letters) You can download the manual http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/34401-90004.pdf' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">here - I haven't looked but it should have all of these commands in it.

QUOTE (Michael_Aivaliotis @ Aug 28 2008, 09:49 PM) No change in appearance and I still can't login. The expressionflow forums look the exact same as LAVA... If no one else is having problems it makes me think it's something on my end, but so far nothing I have tried has had any effect. http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_08_2008/post-8758-1220022524.png' target="_blank">

I'm hoping this is not a bug, but some random config issue on my end, but when I try to view LAVA from home it looks strange. Peoples personal pictures are displayed instead of their avatars and the main LAVA banner is replaced with an Invision PowerBoard banner. Is this something I'm doing? I'm running IE7 at home.

QUOTE (Tom Bress @ Aug 26 2008, 01:40 PM) I agree and would certainly use a typedef enum on the exam, but I don't think it is always the best choice. Anyway, lunch time is over so here is my second attempt. I'm splaying myself out for the world to critique here. Good exercise by the way - I learned some new things :thumbup: http://lavag.org/old_files/post-8758-1219953081.zip'>Download File:post-8758-1219953081.zip

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Aug 28 2008, 06:22 AM) Thanks for all the replies. I tend to follow this paradigm myself, but this brings up the follow-up question...Is it OK (from a best practices viewpoint) to consciously ignore errors? I do it when I need to execute a section of code regardless of what is on the error wire, but I want the error to propagate through. I always feel a little a little guilty about leaving those error I/Os unwired though QUOTE (ASTDan @ Aug 28 2008, 08:11 AM) This brings up something I am really interstied to learn. How do other people do their error handeling? This I think would make a great NI week topic. I would definitely be interested in a presentation on error handling. It seems there are many ways to get it done, but not really any prominent best practices on the subject.