Here's a challenge: Dynamically draw a topology diagram

[billyt]

Suppose there is a simple 2-D string array with 2 columns. Column A has values that have an "arrow" pointing to values in column B such that if A = {a, b, a} and B = {b, a, g} then the topology diagram should be displayed below. To make things simpler I am only interested in using "a" as the center such that there will not be values in the columns that don't subscribe to this scheme. Please also notice that a is pointing to g but g is not pointing back to a because there is no pair match (only 1-way). I only want to make custom controls visible/not visible as a complete last resort since the columns can get large. The position of a, b, g and the text inside a string can be visible/not visible however if need be.

If anybody has any ideas, you would be my hero. I don't believe LabVIEW is the right tool for this, but please prove me wrong.

I am using LabVIEW 7.1

g

^

|

|

a <--> b

Thanks in advance,

Billy T

[Yair]

An approach that immediately comes to mind is using the picture control - you will need to recognize the number of unique elements and how many connections each one has and decide where in the picture you want to display each one.

Drawing the arrows is a joke (just create a subVI which recieves the start point and end point and adds the arrow head based on the angle) and writing text is not a real problem (you can easily create another subVI which will even write the text in a filled circle or rectangle), so the main challenge should be the code which decides where to put each element.

[crelf]

An approach that immediately comes to mind is using the picture control - you will need to recognize the number of unique elements and how many connections each one has and decide where in the picture you want to display each one.

I'm thinking an OO approach using the picture control would be a fast and scalable way of making this happen. Maybe Mike H. from Endevo can help out with some ideas - after all, he put together the UML Modeller which does exactly that...

[billyt]

Yup, I'm currently using the picture functions for manipulation just as suggested. Just thought there might be something else I didn't think about. Thanks guys.

Billy T :thumbup:

[MikaelH]

Yup, I'm currently using the picture functions for manipulation just as suggested. Just thought there might be something else I didn't think about. Thanks guys.

Billy T :thumbup:

You can do a lot with the picture control, but you could always try some Active-X containers.

E.g http://www.nwoods.com/

..and here is just a funny picture control example (I just it as a splash screen for my UML-editor).

SplashScreen.llb

//Mikael