using your own Icon Editor in LV8

[Mark Balla]

While going through my archives from info-LabVIEW I found a posting by Steve Mercer that talks about making a personal Icon editor in LV8.

I haven't seen any other discussion on this issue so I thought I would share what I've done incase it is useful to others.

To make your own Icon editor that Labview will use. Do the following.

Open the

National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.0\resource\plugins\lv_icon.vit template

Create your own Icon editor and save it in the same director as lv_icon.vi it must be this name.

Restart LabVIEW.

The next time Labview needs the icon editor it will use the lv_icon.vi instead of the standard one.

Here is the one I built.

Download File:post-584-1149100559.vi OLD VERSION

Download File:post-584-1149281944.vi NEW VERSION

Download File:post-584-1149100959.zip

Download File:post-584-1149101000.zip

It is limited to 2 colors with a header and 4 possible lines for the body.

One additional feature is it will compress letters as small as possible so the words

Will fit.

Has anyone else made their own icon editor?

All the support files are ziped up.

you need to unzip them and keep in the same directory as the lv_icon.vi

Modified 6-2-06

The original post had untested button hiding issues.

The new one should work better.

None of the support files have changed.

**UPDATE The latest verison of the Icon editor is now in the CR here**

[crelf]

Has anyone else made their own icon editor?

Sounds like a great OpenG project...

[PJM_labview]

While going through my archives from info-LabVIEW I found a posting by Steve Mercer that talks about making a personal Icon editor in LV8.

I haven't seen any other discussion on this issue so I thought I would share what I've done incase it is useful to others.

To make your own Icon editor that Labview will use. Do the following.

Open the

National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.0\resource\plugins\lv_icon.vit template

Create your own Icon editor and save it in the same director as lv_icon.vi it must be this name.

Restart LabVIEW.

The next time Labview needs the icon editor it will use the lv_icon.vi instead of the standard one.

Here is the one I built.

Download File:post-584-1149100559.vi

Download File:post-584-1149100959.zip

Download File:post-584-1149101000.zip

It is limited to 2 colors with a header and 4 possible lines for the body.

One additional feature is it will compress letters as small as possible so the words

Will fit.

Has anyone else made their own icon editor?

Mark, it is missing a bunch of VIs from your "universal utilities" folder.

[Mark Balla]

Mark, it is missing a bunch of VIs from your "universal utilities" folder.

The files are in the second zip file. I had to break it up so I could upload to the site.

[boone_93]

The files are in the second zip file. I had to break it up so I could upload to the site.

I can't take credit for creating this editor but I did modify it to better suit my needs. It's available from the NI site. What I like about it is it loads up an entire directory so I can do my icons in batches when my project is complete. It's easy to have a "theme" for the icons when doing them all at once.

I'll include both the original and my version. The original was written with the state diagram toolkit so it has some restrictions as far as editing goes. My version should be unlocked from that.

Dan

Download File:post-2473-1149112455.zip

Download File:post-2473-1149112705.zip

[jdebuhr]

Mark,

I saw your Icon Editor at the LabVIEW Developer Education Day in Milwaukee yesterday.

I thought I would download it and try it out. I have it installed as you suggest to in your post. but when I restart LabVIEW, open up at VI and double click to edit the ICon, it works, but when I click ont he Edit complete, it pops right to the Default icon editor and no changes are made. Is there a Step I am missing?

Thanks

Jeff

[Mark Balla]

Mark,

I saw your Icon Editor at the LabVIEW Developer Education Day in Milwaukee yesterday.

I thought I would download it and try it out. I have it installed as you suggest to in your post. but when I restart LabVIEW, open up at VI and double click to edit the ICon, it works, but when I click ont he Edit complete, it pops right to the Default icon editor and no changes are made. Is there a Step I am missing?

Thanks

Jeff

No.

You are not missing anything I will correct this and repost the right code.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention

[bsvingen]

Certainly not my own icon editor, and i'm sure it is old news, but for those who don't know there is another icon editor with LV8 in LabVIEW 8.0\applibs\iconeditor\iconedit.exe

Some of the nice features are:

* Antialiased text (text looks incredible much better, especially small text).

* All the fonts in LV are available.

* Very good selection tool.

* Ability to make circles and ovals

I think it is a part of the project builder, because i saw it when i first made an executable in LV8

It does not make LV icons, but you can copy and paste the whole icon, or just parts directly into the LV icon editor.

[jdebuhr]

No.

You are not missing anything I will correct this and repost the right code.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention

Downloaded the latest this Am and it works fine..

it is very cool, works really well, I tend to use Text for all my VIs (eaiser to find what I am looking for)

I will be using this editor of yours until I get time to play around and try to build one of my own

[Mark Balla]

Downloaded the latest this Am and it works fine..

it is very cool, works really well, I tend to use Text for all my VIs (eaiser to find what I am looking for)

I will be using this editor of yours until I get time to play around and try to build one of my own

Thanks for the complement.

I look forward to seeing your version and talking to you at the next user group meeting.

[Neville D]

No.

You are not missing anything I will correct this and repost the right code.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention

Hi Mark,

Any chance you could post your icon editor here? Hass your previous upload to LAVA been modified?

Thanks,

Neville.

[Mark Balla]

Download File:post-584-1149100959.zip

Download File:post-584-1149101000.zip

Modified 6-2-06

The original post had untested button hiding issues.

This one should work better.

None of the support files have changed.

Download File:post-584-1149281944.vi NEW VERSION

Hi Mark,

Any chance you could post your icon editor here? Hass your previous upload to LAVA been modified?

Thanks,

Neville.

Yes the previous upload has been modified

the lv_icon.vi NEW VERSION and the 2 zip file is what is needed to get the icon editor to work.

Sorry for the confusion.

[donroth]

Do the various icon editors discussed here allow one to create the icons needed for executables?

I have not upgraded yet to 8.0 (going to go directly now to 8.2) but if one refers to the application builder that goes with LabVIEW 7.1, I refer to the icons shown on "Application Settings" tab.

Don

[Ton Plomp]

Do the various icon editors discussed here allow one to create the icons needed for executables?

I have not upgraded yet to 8.0 (going to go directly now to 8.2) but if one refers to the application builder that goes with LabVIEW 7.1, I refer to the icons shown on "Application Settings" tab.

Don

The icon editor discussed here is not meant for executables but for VI-icons. However it can be modified to build .ico files to go with the executables!

Ton

[donroth]

The icon editor discussed here is not meant for executables but for VI-icons. However it can be modified to build .ico files to go with the executables!

Ton

I have not looked at the code yet for these editors. I have been toying a little with LabVIEW 8.0 this week and am going to download LabVIEW 8.2 today as I have SSP subscription. Anyhow, what would be needed is a way to programmatically make 16-color and 2-color 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons, and the ability to save as .ico file.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Hi guys & gals,

Another similar nice OpenG projects would be a Windows Explorer LabVIEW Extension, that would show the real VI icon instead of the default VI icon when browsing the files with windows explorer. I think this would be fairly easy task, some COM programming and a small LabVIEW generated DLL that would reaturn the icons to the COM program.

[Aitor Solar]

I have not looked at the code yet for these editors. I have been toying a little with LabVIEW 8.0 this week and am going to download LabVIEW 8.2 today as I have SSP subscription. Anyhow, what would be needed is a way to programmatically make 16-color and 2-color 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons, and the ability to save as .ico file.

The project icon editor available in LV8 (you see it when defining an application properties) allows to create .ico files for LV executables. But not programmatically, I'm afraid

Saludos,

Aitor

[donroth]

I have not looked at the code yet for these editors. I have been toying a little with LabVIEW 8.0 this week and am going to download LabVIEW 8.2 today as I have SSP subscription. Anyhow, what would be needed is a way to programmatically make 16-color and 2-color 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons, and the ability to save as .ico file.

FYI, I just had to create an executable in LabVIEW 8.2 and it has a built-in icon editor for executables. (Don't know if 8.0 had this, I went pretty much directly from 7.1 ---> 8.2.). This was long overdue and a welcome addition for me.

Don

FYI, I just had to create an executable in LabVIEW 8.2 and it has a built-in icon editor for executables. (Don't know if 8.0 had this, I went pretty much directly from 7.1 ---> 8.2.). This was long overdue and a welcome addition for me.

Don

ps. I see in the prior post that this was available in LV8. I had replied to my earlier post prior to seeing this reply....Don

[martin@aerodynamics]

Hello Dan

You can also download a newer version of "my" RUAG Icon Editor from

http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?automodu...amp;showfile=35

Now you can Edit the Icons from *.vi, *.vit, *.ctl even if they are in a *.llb.

Furthermore you can choose between diffrent color-sets.

Martin

[JDave]

I am writing an icon editor for my LV icons and I wanted to use the filename to get text for the icon. But it doesn't seem that there is a way to determine what VI called the icon editor. I tried using 'MenuLaunchVI' and 'ActiveVI' scripting properties to no avail. The frontmost property doesn't work either, since the VI isn't frontmost anymore. The 'ActiveVI' property did work in 8.0, but not 8.2

I was pretty excited when I saw mballa's icon editor (nice job BTW :thumbup: ) had an input for the VI ref, but this was his own addition and it doesn't get written when LV calls it (e.g. upon double-clicking the VI's icon).

It seems that the rabbit hole stops here for now.... Anyone found otherwise?

David

[Ton Plomp]

It seems that the rabbit hole stops here for now.... Anyone found otherwise?

Hi David,

look here

Ton

[JDave]

Hi David,

look here

Ton

Thanks for the pointer Ton,

I will give it another go tonight, but it seems like the information in that thread works with tools called from the Tools Menu. I don't think it worked for the icon editor because it wasn't called from the Tools menu. But I will try some more. I seem to remember that the MenuLaunchVI property was just empty when queried in the icon editor.

Maybe I will toss that property node into mballa's code, just to see if I am messing something up. That is the probable thing...

Thanks again,

David