Zoom in exe file in LabVIEW 8.2!?

[Janne]

Well, first for all hello to all!! I'm quite new LabVIEW user and ofcourse I have problem with that. Me and my workmate are doing some LabVIEW program to the other company. We plan to do it 19'' monitor but the problem is fit it to 9'' widescreen monitor. Ofcourse we can do it same size in 19'' but its so small that almost everyone who use it have to use magnifying glass. So, is it anybody some solution of this. i've tried to search almost every forums to found solutions but no. Thanks if someone bother!ps. sorry my english

[Aristos Queue]

There's no zoom in LabVIEW. On MacIntosh, the operating system allows you to zoom any application, so you can make the wires/nodes/controls as big as you want. But if you're working under MSWindows or Linux, the only solution is to lower your screen resolution.

[Yair]

I'm not sure what the problem is exactly. The smaller displays are usually limited to lower resolutions (e.g. 800x600, although since it's a wide screen, it's probably other numbers). Once you know that resolution, you can just build your UI to fit in that area. It won't fill the entire display area of the 19" screen, but it should be readable if you're not using some extremely high resolution. I use 1440x900 on a 15.4" laptop and it looks fine to me.

[Janne]

That 9'' lcd monitor is touch screen and I have to add there several controls. So you understand that those controls are so small that it's almost impossible to use them. We use 800x600 and 800x480 resolutions of that screen. I tried to do that program same resolution in 19'' monitor, but when I'm putting that in 9'' monitor it's too small. Well, now I'm pretty sure zooming it's not possible but is it possible to use some kind of navigation window???

[Aitor Solar]

I have a similar problem. We designed an application for a dual monitor system, both of them 17". Now, we have to install in another system whose second screen is just 8", and the UI must be useful in both screens .

The easiest solution I've found (since a heavy redesign of the UI or the main code is out of question) is to show a reduced image of the FP when the screen is to small to show the actual FP, using the Get Image Scaled method for it. A simple loop gets the image updated. Of course, this way the user can't operate in the small panel, just see it, but is an acceptable drawback since the screen is to small to work with it, anyhow, and he can always move it to the main screen (in that case, the actual FP is shown).

Saludos,

Aitor

[Yair]

QUOTE(Janne @ Feb 26 2008, 09:51 AM)

That 9'' lcd monitor is touch screen and I have to add there several controls. So you understand that those controls are so small that it's almost impossible to use them. We use 800x600 and 800x480 resolutions of that screen. I tried to do that program same resolution in 19'' monitor, but when I'm putting that in 9'' monitor it's too small. Well, now I'm pretty sure zooming it's not possible but is it possible to use some kind of navigation window???

I'm still not sure what your problem is. I worked with the PDA module and a PDA usually has 320x240 display and they're usually under 4". To work with it, I just created a decoration of that size and made sure the controls fit in that decoration.

If you are using the touch panel module, it probably has a feature similar to what the PDA module had since version 7.1 where you can develop your code using large controls and then set the scaling when you deploy an application. If you are using scaling with standard controls, I assume that would create the effect you're experiencing.

I don't know where you set the scaling in 8.x, though. Presumably, it's in the build settings.

[crelf]

QUOTE(Yen @ Feb 26 2008, 02:03 PM)

I'm still not sure what your problem is. I worked with the PDA module and a PDA usually has 320x240 display and they're usually under 4". To work with it, I just created a decoration of that size and made sure the controls fit in that decoration.

:thumbup: That works really well when working with subpanels too.

[TobyD]

QUOTE(Janne @ Feb 25 2008, 11:51 PM)

I tried to do that program same resolution in 19'' monitor, but when I'm putting that in 9'' monitor it's too small.

Don't change the resolution of your monitor. Resolution is the number of pixels that your monitor displays (horizontal x vertical). If you change the resolution of your 19" monitor you are displaying 800x600 pixels over 19 inches. If you then cram the same number of pixels down to 9" your controls and indicators will shrink.

Leave your 19" monitor at standard resolution (probably 1280x1024) and then do like Yen reccomends. Use a decoration to draw a box on your front panel that is 800 pixels x 600 pixels. As you are drawing the box there is a small tooltip that tells you the size. You will probably find that the measured diagonal of this box is about 9" on your 19" monitor. Develop your front panel to fit inside this box and still have controls that can easily be actuated with a touch screen interface. Now when you move it to the 9" monitor your FP should not be scaled too much.

[Yair]

QUOTE(TobyD @ Feb 27 2008, 08:16 PM)

As you are drawing the box there is a small tooltip that tells you the size.

Or you can use the http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=260737' target="_blank">resize dialog.

[Janne]

Well, me and my workmate did do that right size of decoration. The problem is that the picture what we have to use at the decoration is so big. Picture contains about ten or more relays. Those relays contains 6 buttons each. So the final user can automatically and easy change connections. But anyway, i think it's not possible what i want. I thought when U are building exe you can get same kind of thing like bird's eye view. But thank you all for your time.

[Tomi Maila]

Hei Janne!

I guess most of this is already covered in the thread but as I wanted to reply to my Finnish colleague I decided to answer you anyway

As it was said there is not a zoom functionality in LabVIEW, though you could write such by yourself if you wanted. However from user experience point of view I think this is not optimal solution as zooming user interfaces are not very good to use. They may be mandatory in mobile phone web browsers where the target web page is large and the screen is small. However if you are able to modify the user interface then you definitely should make the interface proper for the screen size and not use zooming. It will save user nerves.

Well, what methods are there in LabVIEW to make user interfaces for various screen sizes. There are several things you can do.

- You can set selected controls to resize when your screen gets larger

- You can divide your FP into panes, some of which resize and some of which do not resize when the panel is resized, this is what I ususally do.

- If the screen is too small to fit all your controls, you can place them into a tab control.

- You can use a tab control to make a wizard user interface. This doesn't suit all use cases but wizards generally use less front panel space.

- You can write multiple user interfaces for your application and select programmatically appropriate user interface at runtime. Isolate each user interface into a single VI. Because you are using LabVIEW 8.20, you have access to LabVIEW Object-Oriented Programming, you can isolate each user interface as a LabVIEW class. However I recommend using LabVIEW 8.5. with LVOOP. If you are interested in this option, I can give you some details or blog on it.

Cheers,

Tomi

p.s. Are you coming to NI Days in Helsinki May 7, 2008?