Cool icon trick

[Fab]

I just discovered by accident that if you copy a primitive VI (like add) then edit the icon of a VI and paste , you get the icon of the primitive?

I am sure a lot of you already knew this, but I thought I would share, because it was a nice surprise to me. Now it will be easier to create new icons.

Fab

[jgcode]

You can also do this with subVIs

[PaulG.]

Another icon trick which might be well known ... if you go into Google Images search and type in 32x32 png (size: icon) you will get all the icons you can possibly need. You can narrow the search for specifics (stop, go, etc) Right click, copy and paste it in your icon editor.

[crelf]

  On 2/7/2012 at 2:02 AM, Fab said:

I just discovered by accident that if you copy a primitive VI (like add) then edit the icon of a VI and paste , you get the icon of the primitive?

You can paste just about anything into the icon editor and it'll try to bitmap it:

  On 2/7/2012 at 1:29 PM, PaulG. said:

Another icon trick which might be well known ... if you go into Google Images search and type in 32x32 png (size: icon) you will get all the icons you can possibly need.

That's a great tip - but remember to respect the copyright of the images you find

[Fab]

Also, you might want to change color and make it clear that this is a subVI of yours and not a primitive

[hooovahh]

Wow I'm a little ashamed to say that I've always done a print screen, pasted my whole screen into Mspaint, then selected just the primative I wanted, copied and then pasted into the icon editor.

Also I believe that Flickr allows you to search for images in the public domain, or royalty free. The site is massivly slow for me at the moment so I can't check but I think that's where I saw that feature.

[Phillip Brooks]

  On 2/7/2012 at 3:24 PM, hooovahh said:

Wow I'm a little ashamed to say that I've always done a print screen, pasted my whole screen into Mspaint, then selected just the primative I wanted, copied and then pasted into the icon editor.

Where's the LAVA "Me Too" button?

  On 2/7/2012 at 2:58 PM, crelf said:

That's a great tip - but remember to respect the copyright of the images you find

Mel Brooks may have a few words he'd like to share with you...

[drjdpowell]

  On 2/7/2012 at 11:10 AM, jgcode said:

You can also do this with subVIs

Oh, man… The number of times I’ve double clicked on a subVI, double clicked on its icon to bring up the editor, made a copy, closed the editor, opened another VI’s editor, pasted. What a waste of time!

[jzoller]

Never knew this... thanks!

Joe Z.

[Phillip Brooks]

  On 2/7/2012 at 5:11 PM, drjdpowell said:

Oh, man… The number of times I’ve double clicked on a subVI, double clicked on its icon to bring up the editor, made a copy, closed the editor, opened another VI’s editor, pasted. What a waste of time!

You can also drag and drop the icon of one vi to another vi without copy/paste. No keystrokes required...

(front panel to front panel)

Edited February 7, 2012 by Phillip Brooks

[crelf]

  On 2/7/2012 at 4:53 PM, Phillip Brooks said:

Mel Brooks may have a few words he'd like to share with you...

You're not the first person to suggest we look alike...

[Fab]

  On 2/7/2012 at 6:23 PM, Phillip Brooks said:

You can also drag and drop the icon of one vi to another vi without copy/paste. No keystrokes required...

(front panel to front panel)

Thanks for posting that, I didn't know I could do it from icon to icon. I knew about dragging any image file from your file explorer directly on to the icon without opening the icon editor too. I normally demo it with the sample pictures that ship with Windows and I end up with a VI with a sunset icon (XP) or a Koala (Windows 7)

[Ravi Beniwal]

Thanks for the accidental discovery Fab! You'd be amazed at how many hours all of us have collectively wasted due to this ignorance!

I did a whole lot of copy>Paint>Copy>Icon Editor just today (with primitives ). Tomorrow should be easier now!

[Phillip Brooks]

  On 2/8/2012 at 12:31 AM, Fab said:

I normally demo it with the sample pictures that ship with Windows and I end up with a VI with a sunset icon (XP) or a Koala (Windows 7)

Here is our default image for our generic dialog. I smile every time I fail to wire a real image...

[Mr Mike]

This isn't so much of a trick as it is a manifestation of two cool features that aren't really advertised:

1. If you copy FP / BD objects it puts a picture of them on the system clipboard and it places a copy of the objects themselves in LabVIEW's internal clipboard.
   
2. You can paste from the system clipboard in the icon editor.
   

[hooovahh]

  On 2/7/2012 at 6:54 PM, crelf said:

You're not the first person to suggest we look alike...

The resemblence is uncanny. I'd go so far to say that an automated image search alorithm thought you were the same person.

[crelf]

  On 2/13/2012 at 8:14 PM, hooovahh said:

The resemblence is uncanny. I'd go so far to say that an automated image search alorithm thought you were the same person.

That's only because we wear similar bowties.

[Aristos Queue]

  On 2/7/2012 at 5:11 PM, drjdpowell said:

Oh, man… The number of times I’ve double clicked on a subVI, double clicked on its icon to bring up the editor, made a copy, closed the editor, opened another VI’s editor, pasted. What a waste of time!

If the Icon Editor persisted the layer information to the clipboard when you copied, then it wouldn't necessarily be a waste of time, but that's never been implemented in any of the icon editor plugins that I've seen.

[jgcode]

  On 2/13/2012 at 10:39 PM, Aristos Queue said:

If the Icon Editor persisted the layer information to the clipboard when you copied, then it wouldn't necessarily be a waste of time, but that's never been implemented in any of the icon editor plugins that I've seen.

The ability to programmably interact with layers in 2011+ would be nice too