Express VIs - Do you use them?

[PBlume]

Hello LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects!

I have some questions regarding Express VIs:

1) Do advanced LabVIEW users, such as yourselves, use Express VIs?

2) If the answer is yes, do you use them initially for fast prototyping, or do you keep them in your code long-term?

3) If you keep them in your code long-term, do you view them as big or small icons? Why?

4) If you don't keep them in your code long-term, do you create diagarms from them and then manually optimize for your application, or do you replace them with brand new code written from scratch?

5) If you don't use them at all, what is the reason?

Thanks!

Peter Blume

PS - I'm not sure if this constitutes a formal survey, but many people are encouraged to respond!

[mpa]

Hello LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects!

I have some questions regarding Express VIs:

1) Do advanced LabVIEW users, such as yourselves,

Am I advanced? I don't know, but I'll answer anyway

use Express VIs?

Sometimes, if they're convenient.

2) If the answer is yes, do you use them initially for fast prototyping, or do you keep them in your code long-term?

I never prototyped anything with them, except once I played with the Signal Generator a bit. I have used them once or twice in production code. Sometimes they're a little nicer than attaching constants.

3) If you keep them in your code long-term, do you view them as big or small icons? Why?

Big, unless they're taking too much room. They look nicer than the normal LabView icons.

I see Express VIs as a gimmick. I've never found them especially useful. They offer me very little beyond normal VIs.

[Ulrich]

Am I advanced? I don't know, but I'll answer anyway

Sometimes, if they're convenient.

I never prototyped anything with them, except once I played with the Signal Generator a bit. I have used them once or twice in production code. Sometimes they're a little nicer than attaching constants.

Big, unless they're taking too much room. They look nicer than the normal LabView icons.

I see Express VIs as a gimmick. I've never found them especially useful. They offer me very little beyond normal VIs.

Hi,

I don't use Express VIs. Till now I dind't see any advantage of using them (maybe I'm blind :-)

have a nice day

Ulrich

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

You can create a poll that will allow you to ask multiple choice questions and track the stats, if you are interested. I believe you can even create a poll for this post...

1) Do (I) use Express VIs? No.

5) If you don't use them at all, what is the reason? I am a LAVA member, and our (old) motto is No Express VIs Required (follow this link)

[crelf]

Hello LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects!

G'Day Peter and welcome to LAVA - it's great to have you here! For those who don't know Peter, he is the founder and president of Bloomy Controls and is a published LabVIEW author - a great resource for us here at LAVA

Do advanced LabVIEW users, such as yourselves, use Express VIs? Do you use them initially for fast prototyping, or do you keep them in your code long-term?

I very very rarely use them - usually when I'm trying to tech someone else a technique and need to fill in the blanks quickly. I never use them in production code. I tired to once (a long time ago, and maybe things have improved since then, but I haven't had a need to go back since), but needed to modify one of them a little, so I opened one of them up and was spooked by the horribly inefficient and amaturish code inside - it was quicker (and safer) to code what I was doing from scratch.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

G'Day Peter and welcome to LAVA - it's great to have you here! For those who don't know Peter, he is the founder and president of Bloomy Controls and is a published LabVIEW author - a great resource for us here at LAVA

I very very rarely use them - usually when I'm trying to tech someone else a technique and need to fill in the blanks quickly. I never use them in production code. I tired to once (a long time ago, and maybe things have improved since then, but I haven't had a need to go back since), but needed to modify one of them a little, so I opened one of them up and was spooked by the horribly inefficient and amaturish code inside - it was quicker (and safer) to code what I was doing from scratch.

I looked the results of an Express VI thing once and was convinced I could to do it better and faster without them.

But on a related note...

Express VI Development has been added to the "LabVIEW Advanced Application Development" course (i.e. the one origianlly developed by VIE) and had previous served as the source of the more advanced ideas required for the CLA.

(Look what they've done to my song ma)

So I am going to look closer at that material JUST TO PASS THE RE-TEST!

Who knows, maybe I'll find something useful in there.

Ben

[Guest terminator]

I wouldn't say I'm advanced...but...

I don't use them, not ever. Partly inertia, partly because they obscure what is going on, partly because of concerns about speed, efficiency, etc.

My own opinion is that they allow novices to immediately get SOMETHING working but the difficult part of the learning curve still remains if they want to do something nontrivial.

Hello LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects!

I have some questions regarding Express VIs:

1) Do advanced LabVIEW users, such as yourselves, use Express VIs?

2) If the answer is yes, do you use them initially for fast prototyping, or do you keep them in your code long-term?

3) If you keep them in your code long-term, do you view them as big or small icons? Why?

4) If you don't keep them in your code long-term, do you create diagarms from them and then manually optimize for your application, or do you replace them with brand new code written from scratch?

5) If you don't use them at all, what is the reason?

Thanks!

Peter Blume

PS - I'm not sure if this constitutes a formal survey, but many people are encouraged to respond!

[Louis Manfredi]

Hi Peter, Good to hear from you. Welcome to LAVA!

Hello LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects!

I have some questions regarding Express VIs:

1) Do advanced LabVIEW users, such as yourselves, use Express VIs?

Yes. (We'll assume I'm at least 'advanced' enough to weigh in here. )

2) If the answer is yes, do you use them initially for fast prototyping, or do you keep them in your code long-term?

So far I've used them exclusively as a help tool to give me a code example of something new to me. -- For this purpose, they are very convenient, both easy to access and easy to configure as examples close to what I really want to do.

4) If you don't keep them in your code long-term, do you create diagarms from them and then manually optimize for your application, or do you replace them with brand new code written from scratch?

So far, every time I've used them I've replaced them with brand new code written from scratch. Often simply cutting and pasting bits from the express vi into my new vi.

I like my code to be less cluttered with never-used cases and a little more clearly organized and structured than what you end up with from the express vis. Aside from the aesthetics of the code, it is easier to copy and paste the parts I need than to figure out how much all the rest of the stuff is costing me in terms of memory and execution efficiency.

Best Regards, Louis

[crelf]

So I am going to look closer at that material JUST TO PASS THE RE-TEST!

Re-test?!? There is no re-test for the CLA (yet) - you just get a new certificate and a "nothing significant has changed since you took the test" letter.

:question: Does that suggest that ExpressVI development is insignificant?

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

Re-test?!? There is no re-test for the CLA (yet) - you just get a new certificate and a "nothing significant has changed since you took the test" letter.

:question: Does that suggest that ExpressVI development is insignificant?

That was the case before the new versiobn of the course was offered.

We taught that course for the first time (our first time) on July 11th.

Now that the course is being taught, we should expect the test to change.

Ben

[Chris Davis]

I've used them to prototype something, as many have listed here. I've also seen them misused, the biggest misuse I remember is using the ExpressVI for a formula node to solve y = x + 2*sqrt(x), inside a loop, and that loop ran thousands of times during one pass of the program's main loop. If you have never looked at the code behind that particular ExpressVI, you will find a work of art, and it is useful when you don't know much about formula nodes or how to solve a nontrivial math equation using LabView. Like I said before, they seem to do a good job of showing us how to prototype something...

[PBlume]

Thanks for your responses to my post regarding Express VIs. I am going to initiate a related post under LabVIEW 8, regarding the new File Dialog Express VI.

Sincerely,

Peter Blume