i2dx

hello everybody!

there is an update availiable for download:

(I hope nobody minds, if I advertise here?)

ADO Tool Updates

befor I forget it:

I the "rename" function in the new save dialog. I helps a lot, when refactoring your code!

I have found the proof for the 5th dimension!

it DOES exist, it IS NOT small, AND you can see, feel, hear and smell it!

here it is

:beer:

I ran in the same problem today. The "point to row" method can fix a lot, but I still have not found a solution how to figure out, whether I dropped an element ON or UNDER an other element, except with manually calculating the cursor position and the element sizes, which seems to be to much work for that purpose.

I'm a little bit disappointed that it's much harder in LV 8.x to create a user interface with a drag & drop tree than in LV 7.1 ...

:laugh: Hoooooray everyone: alfa's back!

Yay! my first though when I was viewing "new posts list"

I think I must have entered that fifth dimension a couple of times.

I was stuck in it the complete thursday morning. I guess there were too many superstrings in my last beer on wednesday evening!

That's what I'm talkin' about - a really generic util that could accept plug-ins. I wouldn't want it added to the app builder, but I'd like a way to call whatever I wanted from the app builder instead...

hmm ... creating plugins would be easy, thanks to VI Server and SubPanels. Let's start a Project and a new thread?

C'mon idx2 - you know I can't play favorites

okok, I just wanted to play the prima donna :beer:

and as I write this, it comes to my mind, that I could make the frontpanel tool even more generic.

Maybe I could even convice NI to add that functionality to the application builder?

Mmmm - this VI has potential. It could be useful as a part of a tool that does a whole bunch of stuff to your VIs before you build, archive, etc. Perhaps as a component of the OpenG builder?

hey, my frontpanel (<CR>!) tool does the same and more!

and you did not mention it in a word <sniff>

.oO(but I guess, I will survive that )

The Texas Motor Speedway (between Austin and Dallas on I-35) is open to amatures who want to race their own cars in the off-season.

hmm ... that could be a way. want me "back home" ?

BTW: do you know Matt Duff? He worked for R&D before he came to NI Services in Germany ...

*sigh* that's what everyone says

I have no problems with cold weather (I have several pieces from the "The North Face" collection ...) but - as you maybe know - I am from Germany, and I work as a freelancer / contractor. If you need backup soon and badly, maybe you may consider to hire me

Generally I am interested in working in USA for one or two years. In my first approach I would not like to stay longer, because your speed limit really hurts me - or I'd have to take my car along and need a race track near to the place where I would live

After a few months' familiarization with LabVIEW, I would like to ask some questions about how to get prepared for NI Certificated LabVIEW Developer examination. As of associate developer, some of the advanced programming topics such as synchronization and design patterns are discussed though not elaborated. At this stage, I think trying to read more VIs developed by others and practice developing by myself are of the the highest priority. My question is what is taught in NI Intermediate Course in terms of programing techniques. If I will not be able to attend the course, what should I pay most attention to when I am building up my LabVIEW experience especially in an effort to take the CLD examination?

the CLD exam is relatively easy, if you have *some* programming skills and if you take care of the following advice:

1. take yourself at least 15 minutes to read through the task again and again. make sure you have understood ALL parts of it. Your worst enemy in the CLD exam is time! You have only one try, and if you get into the situation that you have reached a dead end ... good luck

2. create the frontpanel and add documentation to EVERY control and indicator. Documentation is at least 30% of the exam!

3. use a simple state machine with an enum as case selector.

All CLD tasks can be solved within time, if you use a simple state machine. DO NOT use a queued state machine with a producer/consumer loop, you will run into trouble handling all cases and catch "unwanted actions" and finaly run out of time.

4. suppress panic if you run short on time. make sure your VI is running (NO BROKEN ARROW!). If there is a bug in functionality, just keep on programming. With a little luck, this bug is considered as minor bug and you will loose only a few points ...

5. DO DOCUMENT

add documentation to every control, wire, case, constant, VI etc, do not forget "free labels" on every wire of your state machine.

6. do not use locals, globals, property nodes if you are not forced to. all tasks can be solved with pure data-flow

BTW: I reached 98% in the CLD exam ... the missing 2 points were for 2 missing constant labes in the block diagram

good luck!

CB

:laugh: Well done!

hmm ... eehmmm ... yes ... err, hmmm

good morning angels

ok, hijack this thread, maybe we need some kind of opposite pole here, if we talk about all the good things. :ninja:

One thing I noticed was that one of your dialog boxes had text in German. It's fed by a constant on the diagram.

ok, thank you.

I will fix that with the next release, which is allready in work and which will have 2 new features:

1: you can select, if you want to go down the entire hierarchy or not

2: you can select, whether you want to use the last changed VI (-hierarchy) or the "Menu Call VI" by default

EDIT:

V 2.0.5 is availiable,

the dialog is now in english and I added the 2 features

File Name: Frontpanel Tool

File Submitter: i2dx

File Submitted: 25 Oct 2006

File Updated: 26 Oct 2006

File Category: LabVIEW Development Environment

IBB Frontpanel Tool V 2.0.4

Copyright

Does this have anything to do with the fact that in 8.2, all my VIs now have windows titled "junk.vi on My Computer" instead of just "junk.vi"?

I read the thread about multiple projects being open at the same time, but it kinda went over my head. Where should I learn about application instances?

yes, it has.

if you have multiple targets, each vi will show it's target in the lower left corner of the VI.

if you have e.g. 2 targets: Windows (My Computer) and a PDA target, you can open one VI in all thre application instances.

If you edit that VI and do not save the changes immediately, you will see the "sync" button in the toolbar.

gmart, thank you for this detailed response!

OK: back to the roots: I'll have to explain a little bit more:

You guessed right, yes I am used to Visal Source Safe (6.0). I used that when I was an employee. In 2004 I became an independent contractor / freelancer, and I was working alone: One Project, one folder on disk, one copy and an automated daily backup on my server. That worked pretty good for me, if I messed something up I had my backups and I could go back in history, if I needed to. Now I've come to the point, that I need a Source Code Control, and since I know, that NI preferes Perforce, it was my first choice.

The reason for this is because most files will be read-only if under source control, so if a file is writeable, Perforce doesn't want to overwrite it since it didn't explicitly change the read-only flag.

Hey, this is an explanation, I can understand. thanks

What do you mean about files not being "really" checked out when done through LabVIEW? Once a file fis checked out, it shouldn't you to check out on edit. There is no way to get around changelists in Perforce as mentioned above so anytime you check out a file it will be on a changelist.

yes, that was really strange. I checked the whole project out and started editing. When I was editing one file (that happened not with *all* files!) I got a dialog box, which informed me, that LV is now going to check out this file, because I am trying to edit this file. That was an automatic dialog, without buttons, which appeared and went of after a few seconds. I guess that had something to do with the chagelist concept?

It is not really added until you submit (check in) the file.

AH! got it. That's why there is the "keep files checked out" checkbox, right?

I would recommend sticking with Perforce a little while longer. It is pretty powerful and I think once you get used to the semantics of the software, you'll like it.

I'll keep on trying! again, thanks a lot!

Why?

mainly because I have the feeling, that I don't have this tool *under my control* and I have difficulties in understanding the documentation and therefore, how the software works.

what the heck is clobber ???

O.k. I found out, that perforce will not overwrite existing files if I have not checked this option, but what does that mean? Is it really that, what I want to have? What happens to my files? I introduced Source Code Control, because these files are *somewhat important*, and I'd like to be sure that my source code control will not mess up something ?

e.g. checking out files. I check out files in LV, but they are not realy checked out. OK, in the Project Explorer they get the "checked out" icon, but if you edit them, LV informs you, that this file has to be checekd out. why? I don't wanna have a pending changelist somewhere, I just want the files to be checked out or checked in. Is there a way to force perforce to write the files immediately?

e.g. adding files. I just added a new project and wanted to get the last revision on my second machine. The files did not exist in the depot. I first had to open P4C, send the pending changes to the depot. check them in, check them out and then I could retrieve the files. strange. I added them in LV with "add to scc", why are the files not in the depot?

all in all it feels like sitting on a bike with a twisted wheel, I can hold in a way the direction, but it's not precise ...

Thanks all - I appreciate your kind, and especially witty words Let all keep LAVA on the grow!

congratulations, from me, too. I hope, that does not count as a "me, too" post

I've still got every ABC Song Book from 1980 to 1990! They *rock*!

hey! stop hijacking MY thread!

this is my last warning! I'll send you the LAVA vigilante justice squad! and I'll send you a virus, which will force your computer to print out all posts from alfa over and over again ... on all of your printers!

:beer:

Hi Folks,

I am currently using Perforce as *my" Source Code Control tool with LV 8.20, but I am not really happy with it. I have not the energy to set up a Linux Machine and get CVS (or clonses) running, so the only alternative seems to bee Visual Source Safe 2005, correct?

Has anyone out there experience with Visual Source Safe 2005 and LabVIEW? I called Microsoft, but there is no trial software availiable, and I am not willing to spend 600 bucks for a "try". Or even better, has anyone a tip, where I can get a Visual Source Safe 2005 trial?

any comments are really apreciated!

thank you,

CB

I just fixed it. The URL to the video was not complete so the player was not working. Probably a copy paste mistake...

hmm ... I don't know, but thank you anyway

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-733295898463347811&hl=de" flashvars=""> </embed>

Hello i2dx.

In these moments I am trying to create the installer of my database application, but when I execute it appears me the message of error "the database file does not exist!" does error number 5012, that way should carry out my installer and where I should locate the file of my database?

Thank you.

double strip the path or use absolute path names.

In a LabVIEW exe, the Path to the main VI is somefoldername\executable.exe\main.vi ...

cheers,

CB

yes - I thought, I had allready posted this - it seems, I forgot.

All in all I'd like to say, that LV 8.20 has brought a noticable improvement in usability. Ok, I am still missing some features, e.g. the Project Explorerer to file hierarchy sync (Michael posted this allready in the wish list) but I like LV 8.20

cheers,

CB

hmm, this is an old feature. You just have to add "funkyerrorcluster=true" to your labview.ini. (tested with LV 7.0 and 7.1)

I don't know if that was a mistake, or it was intended, that this now the default setting, whatever, I like it

cheers,

CB

How about using the system registry to save the INI data AND Checksum the section?

on the one hand, this a good idea, on the other hand, it is not, because, you add some extra difficulties to your development:

during development, it's easier to open an *.ini file with the notepad and edit some entries, than open regedit and edit data stored in the registry.

if your software is in production, it is easier to request someone, "plz send me the *ini-file, I need to see your settings" than to request an export from the registry.

maybe a combination of *.ini file and registry would be a good solution: when closing the programm, make a MD5 hash and store that hash in the registry. Then you can detect any changes and display a "corrupt file" message !?

cheers,

CB