Leaders to comments

[hma]

Hi,

I am new to LV. My development is rather complex and I have a lot of comments in the block diagram. Can comments have leaders (arrows) to wires etc. ?

Thanks in advance,

Hugo

[Louis Manfredi]

Hi Hugo:

Welcome to LAVA!

Very good question. I'm afraid the answer is no.

I do think its a good idea, perhaps it should be added to the wish list.

In general I'm able to stretch my diagrams as required to leave room for comments where needed. And as an issue of programming style, I'm bet everyone would agree that this would be best.

There's a question of avoiding confusion between the leaders and real wires, but since wires only do right angles, and leaders generally go on the diagonal, that might not be too much of a problem.

A couple of relevant tricks which you might not know about if you are new to LabView:

You can use an unwired string constant with a scroll bar for lengthy comments.

You can control-click-drag on an empty patch of the BD to create some empty space in the middle of the diagram.

Perhaps most important :thumbup: Don't be afraid to use sub-vi's. In general its better style than a single cluttered :thumbdown: diagram. The context help information you add for the Sub-vis can serve as much of the documentation which would otherwise have to be in free labels.

At any rate, Welcome to Lava :!: :beer:

Best Regards, Louis

[Mike Ashe]

Hi hma, welcome to LabVIEW.

Actually, yes you can have arrows on your block diagram, you just cannot anchor the ends to the comment and wire. But you can place them however you want.

Just place an arrow on your front panel from the decorations pallete, then copy it from the front panel and paste into the diagram. You can then move, resize etc. This works with any of the decorations. For some reason NI has not added this directly to the palletes for the diagram, but don't let that stop you.

Good luck!

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Just place an arrow on your front panel from the decorations pallete, then copy it from the front panel and paste into the diagram.

Damn! I learn something new every day! :thumbup:

Thanks Mike! :worship:

For grins, I pinned the Decorations Pallete, then with the Front panel active (Decorations Pallete visible) drag-and-dropped various decorations to the block diagram window. I got the No-Can-Do circle with slash, then let go anyway and still get the decoration on my BD.

Stupid is as stupid does... See this

I wonder if there is a LabVIEW.INI file option to enable the decorations pallete with the block digram active?

[Gary Rubin]

Just place an arrow on your front panel from the decorations pallete, then copy it from the front panel and paste into the diagram. You can then move, resize etc. This works with any of the decorations. For some reason NI has not added this directly to the palletes for the diagram, but don't let that stop you.

Huh? Don't you guys have a Decorations sub-pallete in your BD Functions pallete? I have one in 7.1. It has lines, arrows, a text box, and a frame.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

I have one in 7.1. It has lines, arrows, a text box, and a frame.

I've been on 8.0 for a while, and couldn't find it until I went looking now.

It was originally on the top-most pallete, for 8.0 its under:

I thought it was removed in 8.0. Ugh. Guess my age is showing...

[Gary Rubin]

No wonder you didn't find it. That's a really strange place for NI to put it.

[peteski]

Huh? Don't you guys have a Decorations sub-pallete in your BD Functions pallete? I have one in 7.1. It has lines, arrows, a text box, and a frame.

Although I've never used it, I agree with Gary in that I have a Block Diagram Decorations sub-pallet. It doesn't have as many options as its Front Panel "cousin", though.

It also has been possible to paste jpegs and probably a few other picture formats to front panels and diagrams for some time. If I recall correctly, back in the 5 to 5.1.1 (and perhaps before) Windows Labview versions only window's bitmap (.bmp) files could be pasted.

I'm unsure of the Macintosh capabilities history on this, I left that Labview platform back arround 1996.

-Pete Liiva

[Dan Bookwalter]

Damn! I learn something new every day! :thumbup:

Thanks Mike! :worship:

For grins, I pinned the Decorations Pallete, then with the Front panel active (Decorations Pallete visible) drag-and-dropped various decorations to the block diagram window. I got the No-Can-Do circle with slash, then let go anyway and still get the decoration on my BD.

Stupid is as stupid does... See this

I wonder if there is a LabVIEW.INI file option to enable the decorations pallete with the block digram active?

in 8.2 it doesnt give you the no can do circle when you drag and drop the decorations from the FP Pallete to the BD , at least it doesnt for me on XP.

Dan

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

in 8.2 it doesnt give you the no can do circle

I'm also using XP, and 8.2 does the same here... :thumbup:

[hma]

Just place an arrow on your front panel from the decorations pallete, then copy it from the front panel and paste into the diagram. You can then move, resize etc.

Mike, thank you. It works very well ! "Comments with an attached leader" would be however a nice expansion to the development environment.

Thank you all for your welcome and comments.

Hugo

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

RE: Leaders to comments....

I will use the arrows from comments to the code for complicated VI's and I find this to work quite well except...

The VIA complains about over-lapping objects if the arrow crosses over a wire.

Ben