viSci Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 Greetings one and all, As my first post on the new LAVA site I would like to offer a public service announcement to help others avoid the difficulty I have gone through the past 4 hours. Up until today I found the Auto Grow feature to be annoying and disabled it. But lo and behold it was 2 subvi's hidden in a diagram disable structure that were causing my problem. It occurred to me that this is a nasty pitfall of graphical programming that has always existed prior to Auto Grow. So do yourself a favor and leave Auto Grow Enabled! Perhaps in the future structures could have a simple indication if any objects are outside of its visual boundary. Quote Link to comment
Yair Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I definitely agree. I leave it on and think it's very important. Another way of handling something like this is by running the relevant VI analyzer test (assuming you have VI analyzer, of course, and are willing to only find something like this retroactively). I actually like your idea of highlighting such a structure somehow. You should probably suggest it in NI's idea exchange. Quote Link to comment
Val Brown Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 From what I've been reading it sounds like this could be a scripting issue, perhaps even a right-click add-on: viz, to search the entire project for items beyond the boundaries of a structure and report that location, along with the number of items that are "hidden". 1 Quote Link to comment
Aristos Queue Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 From what I've been reading it sounds like this could be a scripting issue, perhaps even a right-click add-on: viz, to search the entire project for items beyond the boundaries of a structure and report that location, along with the number of items that are "hidden". VI Analyzer has a test that looks for this. Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 But lo and behold it was 2 subvi's hidden in a diagram disable structure that were causing my problem. LabVIEWwiki.org to the rescue! There's a really neat undocumented labview.ini key that'll show hidden stuff (kinda grayed out): structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath So do yourself a favor and leave Auto Grow Enabled! I always leave it on - the only time it bothers me is when I'm typing in a string constant (like editing a format string) that's really long and it pushes the structure out as I'm typing. Other than that, I always use it. Quote Link to comment
Yair Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I always leave it on - the only time it bothers me is when I'm typing in a string constant that's really long and it pushes the structure out as I'm typing. Click Shift+Enter when you get to the end of the area and the string constant will become a multi-line string. Unfortunately, that doesn't work with comments, where it's much more commonly needed. 1 Quote Link to comment
Michael Aivaliotis Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I'll have to disagree with you all. Autogrow sucks. But that don't matter because it's a configurable option. Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 Click Shift+Enter when you get to the end of the area and the string constant will become a multi-line string. Doing so doesn't add any \ characters to the string? That's a neat trick! Now all I need it a keyboard combination that switches the justification while I'm typing... Quote Link to comment
viSci Posted July 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I am not able to get the structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath ini to do anything. Could someone confirm that this works? Quote Link to comment
Francois Normandin Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I am not able to get the structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath ini to do anything. Could someone confirm that this works? This is what you should get. But it works only for objects beneath the structure, not hidden inside but out of sight. Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I am not able to get the structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath ini to do anything. Heeeeeey - it's not working in 8.6 for me either Quote Link to comment
Francois Normandin Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 Heeeeeey - it's not working in 8.6 for me either Are you sure? I'm on 8.6 too and it works. Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 Are you sure? I'm on 8.6 too and it works. Ha! I found the issue: you need to add structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath=TRUE not structuresFadeToDiagramBeneath=FALSE (that's the example that's listed in the LabVIEWwiki). Quote Link to comment
Francois Normandin Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 If you don't have VI Analyzer toolkit, see if this can help you. With scripting available, we can now definitely build analysis tools of our own. Test_CheckAutoGrowOff.vi (LV 8.6, requires OpenG Rectangle tools) 1 Quote Link to comment
Daklu Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 I'll have to disagree with you all. Autogrow sucks. Nailed it. I hate autogrow. I've spent far too much time rearranging block diagrams that autogrow (and various other 'features') has screwed up. But that don't matter because it's a configurable option. Well that's no way to engage in a flame war. But lo and behold it was 2 subvi's hidden in a diagram disable structure that were causing my problem. I'm curious... exactly what error were you seeing from having vis in a diagram disable structure? Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 Nailed it. I hate autogrow. I've spent far too much time rearranging block diagrams that autogrow (and various other 'features') has screwed up. You probably don't use the autotool either - shelia. I'm curious... exactly what error were you seeing from having vis in a diagram disable structure? It was probably code in the enabled case of a disable structure? Quote Link to comment
viSci Posted July 15, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 Nice utility, thanks François. Quote Link to comment
Antoine Chalons Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 With scripting available, we can now definitely build analysis tools of our own. with a little work this could be added to the RCF as "enable / disable auto grow on all structures" on a VI and its hierarchy. Quote Link to comment
Francois Normandin Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 with a little work this could be added to the RCF as "enable / disable auto grow on all structures" on a VI and its hierarchy. I agree. I never found the property to change the frame color programmatically. I think it's not exposed... otherwise I would have colored it red to indicate there was something hidden... Quote Link to comment
Antoine Chalons Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 I agree. I never found the property to change the frame color programmatically. I think it's not exposed... otherwise I would have colored it red to indicate there was something hidden... I'll ask NI to expose this property! I am used to change the colour of my case structures when I change the case sensitiveness :-o Quote Link to comment
Daklu Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 You probably don't use the autotool either - shelia. Actually I do use the autotool - betty. (I started with LV8.2 so I never got used to tabbing through the tools.) It was probably code in the enabled case of a disable structure? If so, it should have been easy to find using the Show Error button on the Error List dialog. Quote Link to comment
crelf Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 If so, it should have been easy to find using the Show Error button on the Error List dialog. Only if that code actually had an error that would show up - it's possible that the code in there, as far as LabVIEw is concerned, ran fine, but it produced unexpected results as far as the operation of the VI is was in is concerned. eg: put a VI in the enabled case of a disable structure that deletes all the files in your "My Documents" folder, then hide the structure: LabVIEW'll still run it... Quote Link to comment
Michael Aivaliotis Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 I am used to change the colour of my case structures when I change the case sensitiveness :-o I despise the practice of coloring structures. You guys are hitting all my pet peeves, sheesh. Quote Link to comment
Francois Normandin Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 I despise the practice of coloring structures. You guys are hitting all my pet peeves, sheesh. I knew it was coming. I remember Darren's olympic rings post last year... Quote Link to comment
Daklu Posted July 16, 2009 Report Share Posted July 16, 2009 Only if that code actually had an error that would show up - it's possible that the code in there, as far as LabVIEw is concerned, ran fine, but it produced unexpected results as far as the operation of the VI is was in is concerned. eg: put a VI in the enabled case of a disable structure that deletes all the files in your "My Documents" folder, then hide the structure: LabVIEW'll still run it... That's true, the OP didn't say his VI was broken, only that 2 VIs causing the problem were hidden. Although even in that case execution highlighting should have revealed the VIs. I did have an issue recently where some VIs in a diagram disable structure's disabled case were causing project file links that shouldn't have been there. Quote Link to comment
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