What third party LabVIEW tools do you use the most?

[David_L]

Hey LAVA.  For those who don't know me, my name is David Ladolcetta and I work at NI on the LabVIEW Tools Network team.    A few months ago, Grant Heimbach posted a blog on the LabVIEW News blog about 10 Add-ons (Some Free) That Every LabVIEW Developer Should Use.  However, as the new year is ramping up, I was trying to get some ideas on what the next big thing will be for us in 2014.  So I would like to probe this forum full of the worlds best LabVIEW developers and propose a follow-up question to this post:

 

What third party tools do you actively use that are NOT on the LabVIEW Tools Network?  These can be toolkits, hardware drivers, IDE extensions or even stand alone applications that are built in LabVIEW or help with your daily workflow related to LabVIEW.  I'm looking for great free or paid tools and I'm also open to shameless plugs.  If there is some tool or product you or your company is working on that you think would be a good fit for the LabVIEW Tools Network, please let me know and we can get in touch and start this conversation (either on the thread or in a private message if it's still a work in progress).

 

Thanks!

 

[hooovahh]

Not specifically LabVIEW but I'm a fan of DisplayFusion.  I've seen alot of LabVIEW developers use multi-monitor setups and having quick shortcuts to moves windows between monitors is nice along with multi-taskbars.

 

Custom Quick Drop items.  Several of the more popular ones.

 

Custom scripting functions that I put in the Tools menu.  Simple things like Array to Enum, and Configure SVN with my settings, or setup LabVIEW.ini a specific way.

 

I don't think I've ever had just a single version of LabVIEW installed on my main development machine.  Things like the custom LabVIEW icons help differentiate between versions.

 

Abort All VIs function.

 

Variant Probe.

 

WinAPI functions.

 

How much time has been lost by accidentally opening a 2011 project in 2012, and clicking save all, only to realize it later.  SCC helps but it can still be a problem.  I use a updated program similar to my old LabVIEW Tray Launcher which high jacks the execution of .vi files.  Also adds an Abort All VIs, Launch LabVIEW (version specific), and Kill LabVIEW (version specific).

[ShaunR]

Crypto-G

Project Probe

Windows API

[David_L]

I don't think I've ever had just a single version of LabVIEW installed on my main development machine.  Things like the custom LabVIEW icons help differentiate between versions.

This may not be needed for much longer 

 

Abort All VIs function.

Variant Probe.

LabVIEW Tray Launcher

Project Probe

Windows API

 

These actually sound like good freebie options, maybe time to renew @jgcode's Team LAVA initiative.  I'll have to contact the devs to see if they are interested.  

[jcarmody]

Crypto-G

Project Probe

Windows API

Project Probe is not only "NOT on the LabVIEW Tools Network", it's not on LAVA or ni.com either.  From the OP: "I'm looking for great free or paid tools [...]"  Tease.

[ShaunR]

Project Probe is not only "NOT on the LabVIEW Tools Network", it's not on LAVA or ni.com either.  From the OP: "I'm looking for great free or paid tools [...]"  Tease.

 

 

If there is some tool or product you or your company is working on

 

Just a bit slow, that's all 

Edited January 25, 2014 by ShaunR

[spanner99]

The Ptp Sequencer's been really useful as a beginner in LabVIEW

 

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/212277http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/212277

 

Free for 30 days - no deplyment issues either which Ive found with other sequencers

[Jordan Kuehn]

The Ptp Sequencer's been really useful as a beginner in LabVIEW

 

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/212277http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/212277

 

Free for 30 days - no deplyment issues either which Ive found with other sequencers

 

I think your link is borked.

[Mike Le]

Project Probe is not only "NOT on the LabVIEW Tools Network", it's not on LAVA or ni.com either.  From the OP: "I'm looking for great free or paid tools [...]"  Tease.

 

On the plus side, the "Tags" functionality looks like it's more or less taken care of with 2013's Bookmark Manager.

[hooovahh]

On the plus side, the "Tags" functionality looks like it's more or less taken care of with 2013's Bookmark Manager.

Because NI has support for custom Bookmark Managers, I'm guessing that Shaun could make his own that merges the functionality of the two.

[ShaunR]

Because NI has support for custom Bookmark Managers, I'm guessing that Shaun could make his own that merges the functionality of the two.

Hashes are not a good choice as people use it as a shortcut for "number" or "hash" and it adds noise to the listings. The "tags" are definable in the PP, so you can use what you like but they have to be enclosed (tag), [tag], (my favourite) ~tag~, #tag# etc. But you could have #tags (methinks there are too many twitterers - or is that twits - at NI)

Additionally you can assign different tags, different meanings. For example I use [tag] as "Requirements" (ala the NI requirements thingy) for calculation requirements coverage.

I really must get around to productionising it. It's the "help" document that's putting me off as it will be huge due to the features, which are easy to use, but take a lot of words to explain-like the plug-in system and custom queries.

Edited March 7, 2014 by ShaunR

[hooovahh]

Hashes are not a good choice as people use it as a shortcut for "number" or "hash" and it adds noise to the listings. The "tags" are definable in the PP, so you can use what you like but they have to be enclosed (tag), [tag], (my favourite) ~tag~, #tag# etc.

I think this is a weak argument.  I mean I agree that it isn't very flexible, but how often do you start a comment with # and then no space?  That is the only time a bookmark is made.  If you have the comment "Here we take our # of samples and average them" it won't make a bookmark.  You need to deliberately make a comment starting with # then no space.

 

 

Additionally you can assign different tags, different meanings. For example I use [tag] as "Requirements" (ala the NI requirements thingy) for calculation requirements coverage.

Yeah this one I think is a big over sight by NI.  I mean they have a product, which semi-relies on free labels to be in a specific format to be able to pull requirements.  When making the bookmark manager it should have some how incorporated that standard.  That being said I know you can modify the requirements gateway reading functions to look for #tag instead of [tag] just like I think it uses [covers] could be #covers.

 

I just think that what ever you came up with (which looks great and probably is more flexible) probably isn't as fast as NI's implementation, because they were able to put whatever hooks into the VI to make finding bookmarks faster.  Wouldn't it be nice if your code used the bookmark manager searching tools instead of your own, assuming NI's is faster for larger projects.

 

EDIT: By the way awesome discovery. Bookmarks are saved in the VI in a human readable format.  They can be found by going to the BKMK block of the VI file, this can make finding bookmarks much faster since you don't need to even open a VI reference to the file, you simply need to open it and read the bytes of the file.

[ShaunR]

I think this is a weak argument. I mean I agree that it isn't very flexible, but how often do you start a comment with # and then no space? That is the only time a bookmark is made. If you have the comment "Here we take our # of samples and average them" it won't make a bookmark. You need to deliberately make a comment starting with # then no space.

 

 

Yeah this one I think is a big over sight by NI. I mean they have a product, which semi-relies on free labels to be in a specific format to be able to pull requirements. When making the bookmark manager it should have some how incorporated that standard. That being said I know you can modify the requirements gateway reading functions to look for #tag instead of [tag] just like I think it uses [covers] could be #covers.

 

I just think that what ever you came up with (which looks great and probably is more flexible) probably isn't as fast as NI's implementation, because they were able to put whatever hooks into the VI to make finding bookmarks faster. Wouldn't it be nice if your code used the bookmark manager searching tools instead of your own, assuming NI's is faster for larger projects.

 

EDIT: By the way awesome discovery. Bookmarks are saved in the VI in a human readable format. They can be found by going to the BKMK block of the VI file, this can make finding bookmarks much faster since you don't need to even open a VI reference to the file, you simply need to open it and read the bytes of the file.

 

I paste code snippets from C, ini files and SQL on the diagram so, # isn't a good choice for me. Not saying you can't. Just saying it's an arbitrary choice what to use as an identifier and this particular one has drawbacks (and you can't change it).

 

Using the built in system won't get me any benefits. In fact it will limit it's use to LV2013+ (I use 2009 by choice). Besides, PP doesn't just do tags. You can also see if VIs have default icons, are broken,descriptions and history filled out, FP hints, descriptions etc. Tags are just a small part. and everything else requires opening the VI anyway.

Edited March 7, 2014 by ShaunR

[hooovahh]

You can also see if VIs have default icons, are broken,descriptions and history filled out, FP hints, descriptions etc. Tags are just a small part. and everything else requires opening the VI anyway.

Yeah totally agree, but you'd be surprised at the things that are in the block data for a VI file.  Description, History, Default Icon, Title, Reentrant setting, Help info, and Version info are just a few things I know how to pull out.  But you are right that VI broken-ness you would just have to open the VI reference.

[odoylerules]

LVOOP Assistant