Easiest way to pass data to/from subpanel?

Question

I am new to subpanels and am kind of overwhelmed by the various responses I've read on the forums about this issue.  Some people use named references, others user events, others queues...and right now I guess I've yet to see an example that was really clear for me to understand.
In my case I have lots of different controls and indicators within my subpanel.  Two main things I need to do:
1. I need to pass the VI that gets loaded into the subpanel a single string and a single numeric
2. When there is an event on the subpanel (either a value change event for any control, or a mouse up event), I need to pass out a reference to the control that caused the event.  The top-level VI will then process the top level event.
So that's it....2 inputs (1 string, 1 numeric), 1 output (a ctrl ref).  Both inputs will be changing regularly as data from a telnet connection is read, and the output is driven entirely by user interaction with the subpanel (i.e. it's independent of the inputs).
What's the easiest way to do this?
thanks

Answer 1

bmishoe wrote:
I was thinking about it some more...the ctrl reference that I said I wanted to pass out - it could just as easily be a string.  The label of the control has indices as part of it's name that I use to index an array to extract a string.  There's no reason I couldn't do that within the subpanel and simply pass out the string itself.
So to modify my question slightly - the VI loaded into the subpanel takes in a string and a numeric and outputs a string, and I want the top level VI to execute an event structure each time the output string changes.
thanks...
If that's how you want to handle it, you should have 3 inputs, String, Value and User event, and inside the VI you check if the string has changed, in which case you generate an event. The Main VI will subscribe to the event and execute it.
The event has ofcourse string data so you'll send the data up to Main vi.
Easier would ofcourse to simply have the string output from the subvi and update the main vi's indicator each time.
Whether you show it in a subpanel or as a popup vi is just a visual thing, the VI should work the same.
/Y
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