cleaning up spaghetti, advice needed

[Stagg54]

I'm cleaning up some old code (not mine) and I have run into the following problem.

I have an indicator that is wired to the connector to pass data out of this vi. Unfortunately I can't find the thing on the block diagram. I've tried searching for it by name and haven't really had much success. (If you think this should be simple then you haven't seen the vi I'm dealing with) Is there any way to right click on the connector pane terminal and find the terminal of the corresponding indicator/control? This would also be useful because in this particular vi there are several controls/indicators with the same label. (I know - bad practices. They are not mine. Unfortunately the responsibility to make this code work is now mine. I can't throw it all away and start from scratch. As much as I'd like to, my boss seems to think it is more productive to remove cards from the house of cards instead of building the house out of bricks.)

Any ideas?

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

I'm cleaning up some old code (not mine) and I have run into the following problem.

I have an indicator that is wired to the connector to pass data out of this vi. Unfortunately I can't find the thing on the block diagram. I've tried searching for it by name and haven't really had much success. (If you think this should be simple then you haven't seen the vi I'm dealing with) Is there any way to right click on the connector pane terminal and find the terminal of the corresponding indicator/control? This would also be useful because in this particular vi there are several controls/indicators with the same label. (I know - bad practices. They are not mine. Unfortunately the responsibility to make this code work is now mine. I can't throw it all away and start from scratch. As much as I'd like to, my boss seems to think it is more productive to remove cards from the house of cards instead of building the house out of bricks.)

Any ideas?

clcicking on the icon terminal should give you marching ants arounf the selected object. I guess that is not workin for you?

Ben

[Phillip Brooks]

Any ideas?

Try running VI Analyzer. It can find things like hidden controls/indicators and duplicate names. When you click on the item in the VI Analyzer results, it will locate the item for you.

I've found unused controls/indicators this way (result of cut & paste programming) that where 'off in the buckwheat' with no wires or related code. Some of your duplicate named controls/indicators may not be used, or shudder ...

Your vi may be using references or locals FOR THE WRONG control and be passing out THE WRONG DATA on the connector pane!

Actual personal experience!

[jdunham]

clcicking on the icon terminal should give you marching ants arounf the selected object. I guess that is not workin for you?

that's double-clicking to be precise. That will also pan the block diagram s othat the terminal is on-screen rather than off to the side. You can exploit that by resizing the diagram window to a couple of centimeters on each side. Then when you double-click on the control, it will "zoom" right to the terminal location. Then you can restore the window size and see where the heck you are.

If you see the marching ants, but the terminal is invisible, it may be behind the edge of a loop or structure. Those act like real-world glass windows where you can see stuff in the field of view, but other stuff in that universe which may be tucked off to the side is not visible until you move it into the "glass" part of whatever structure you are looking "through". Of course you probably have lots of structures within structures, which will add confusion but you should be able to work it out.

Jason

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

that's double-clicking to be precise. That will also pan the block diagram s othat the terminal is on-screen rather than off to the side. You can exploit that by resizing the diagram window to a couple of centimeters on each side. Then when you double-click on the control, it will "zoom" right to the terminal location. Then you can restore the window size and see where the heck you are.

If you see the marching ants, but the terminal is invisible, it may be behind the edge of a loop or structure. Those act like real-world glass windows where you can see stuff in the field of view, but other stuff in that universe which may be tucked off to the side is not visible until you move it into the "glass" part of whatever structure you are looking "through". Of course you probably have lots of structures within structures, which will add confusion but you should be able to work it out.

Jason

I was refering to the terminal on the icon connector.

Ben

[Stagg54]

I was refering to the terminal on the icon connector.

Ben

I found it!!

Double clicking on the terminal did not work. It just brought up the icon editor (perhaps that's some sort of LabVIEW options setting?)

Anyway I found it by making sure I had saved all my changes in SVN. Then I just started deleting things with the Context help open. As soon as I saw it disappear from context help, then I knew I must have deleted it, so it must be inside that structure. Then i just hit ctrl+z and went down into the next nested layer.

thanks everyone for the help/advice.

oh and on a related note apparently the search function by default does not search for hidden items. So if the label of the control terminal is not visible searching for it by the label will not get you anywhere. You can always change this though.