Guides and Rulers

[Norm Kirchner]

The alignment grid works... sorta.

I do a lot of system recessed frames inside of invisible clusters for the nice effect that it gives.

and sometimes I have things that their 'bounds' don't quite have the same gutters.

Or you want the same things on multiple tabs to be aligned in the same spots

so the net effect is that in these and other situations, IT"S A BITCH TO GET SHIT TO ALIGN.

So, I propose that NI allows Rulers and Guides similar to photoshop and the like to help us setup our FP easier as to make more professional looking FP.

Thoughts?! before I submit to ni on suggestion page of course

[hfettig]

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Sep 16 2008, 08:22 PM)

so the net effect is that in these and other situations, IT"S A ###### TO GET SHIT TO ALIGN.

I couldn't agree more, Norm. Personally I think that LabVIEW is way behind with its IDE. Not much has changed since I started with LV 6.0. Back then it was still relatively difficult to get a UI together for a Windows application so LabVIEW was ahead of the curve.

However, if you look at the form designer in Visual Studio 2008, it is now miles and miles ahead of LabVIEW 8.6 (with regards to designing a GUI).

When you drop controls onto the GUI and move them around you get automatic alignment guides to the existing controls and it snaps to standard distances between controls as well as the edge of the window.

I assume it is similar to the zoom function people have been requesting, NI will hold all non-trivial IDE changes back and integrate them into this brand new IDE they keep hinting at. But from comments at NI week that is at least two years away.

[Mark Balla]

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Sep 16 2008, 07:22 PM)

The alignment grid works... sorta.

I do a lot of system recessed frames inside of invisible clusters for the nice effect that it gives.

and sometimes I have things that their 'bounds' don't quite have the same gutters.

Or you want the same things on multiple tabs to be aligned in the same spots

so the net effect is that in these and other situations, IT"S A ###### TO GET SHIT TO ALIGN.

So, I propose that NI allows Rulers and Guides similar to photoshop and the like to help us setup our FP easier as to make more professional looking FP.

Thoughts?! before I submit to ni on suggestion page of course

You don't have to place the system frame inside the cluster.

Instead you can replace the cluster frame with a system frame.

Check it out.

Credit goes to Michael who showed us how to do this in a post I can't find

[Antoine Chalons]

QUOTE (mballa @ Sep 17 2008, 06:35 AM)

You don't have to place the system frame inside the cluster. Instead you can replace the cluster frame with a system frame. Check it out. Credit goes to Michael who showed us how to do this in a post I can't find

Great tip !

Thanks for sharing

[Norm Kirchner]

SWEEEET!

and great to see someone else out there is finally riding the Jing bus w/ me!

Ever get hooked on Jott.com too?

[hfettig]

QUOTE (mballa @ Sep 17 2008, 12:35 AM)

You don't have to place the system frame inside the cluster. Instead you can replace the cluster frame with a system frame. Check it out. http://content.screencast.com/users/mballa...e/bootstrap.swf Credit goes to Michael who showed us how to do this in a post I can't find

Wow. That makes a few things a lot easier.

[PaulG.]

Anything that allows us to make better looking front panels is a great idea. Working with control clusters is one of the least favorite parts of my job, simply because it is extremely difficult to get things sized and aligned properly. It has to be perfect. I have a lot of arrays of clusters and their sizes change during runtime. If everything isn't aligned and sized exactly right the FP looks like crap. And that is what the customer sees! I would think NI would realize this and work a little harder to give us the tools to make LV a little "sexier". Not all of our customers are engineers.

[Phillip Brooks]

QUOTE (PaulG. @ Sep 17 2008, 01:14 PM)

I would think NI would realize this and work a little harder to give us the tools to make LV a little "sexier". Not all of our customers are engineers.

Maybe so, but many of THEIR (NIs) customers ARE engineers

I'm lucky that most of my projects have been instrumentation and data processing related; I've tinkered with XControls to help the front-end guys, but something (I don't know what) seems to be missing with them...

[Val Brown]

QUOTE (Phillip Brooks @ Sep 17 2008, 09:21 AM)

Maybe so, but many of THEIR (NIs) customers ARE engineers

I'm lucky that most of my projects have been instrumentation and data processing related; I've tinkered with XControls to help the front-end guys, but something (I don't know what) seems to be missing with them...

And that's a good example of the kind of circular reasoning that precludes a recursive descent to a workable solution. Yes, most of NIs customers are engineers and many of them HEAR the acronym GUI and start looking for something sticking to their feet. If, on the other hand, NI put more focus onto the components and IDE for a not only effective, but world class GUI, all of the discussions around LV being a toy would simply evaporate!. Yes, you can use .NET and ATL components and, and, and but the native NI tools for using them don't offer as much built in support as could be.

Take ActiveX containers...drop a container, create a property, wrap it in a sub-vi and you can then search for that sub-vi but there is no way (that I know of!) to search for the property node BY PROPERTY. Now that has implications far beyond the GUI and is IMO a very serious limitation that requires more "work around" than is needed. And again I may just have missed some sexy way to do this but if I have, so have a HUGE number of AEs over the years, as well as LV consultants.

And what about having skinnable FPs? Now there's a toolkit for someone to build and deploy!

[John Lokanis]

QUOTE (Val Brown @ Sep 17 2008, 10:33 AM)

there is no way (that I know of!) to search for the property node BY PROPERTY.

Not to get off topic here, but can't you use the text search to find the property node by property? Simply enter the text of the property name in the find window.