Opening multiple instances of the same vi

Question

Hi,
I am having trouble opening multiple instances of the same vi.
This vi that I am trying to create can be used like a message display window to display numbers, strings etc (just like labVIEW's display message control except that this vi will update the displayed controls every scan). So for example, I will like to have a subvi, lets call it popup.vi, where I wire in three inputs from my main vi (2 strings and 1 number). Now in my main.vi I have 2 numeric controls Num1 and Num2 with their KeyFocus property nodes.
The intention is that when I select Num1 or Num2 numeric control with my mouse the KeyFocus boolean becomes true and the popup.vi logic kicks in. Meaning that the popup.vi runs and opens its front pane
l displaying the two strings and one numeric value from the main.vi.
The problem arises when I want to open and run multiple instances of the popup.vi.
So when I click on Num1 with my mouse I want the popup.vi to open its front panel with a set of strings and number displayed. At the same time I would want to click on Num2 control and open another instance of the popup.vi with another set of strings and numeric value.
Also, I saved the popup.vi as popup.vit but for some reason vi server will not open the popup.vit. I get a message that popup.vit is already in memory - cannot load.
I have attached a sample of the main.vi and popup.vi program.
Please let me know if you need further clarifications.
I appreciate your help in this matter.
Thanks
Nish
Attachments:
popupVI.zip ‏37 KB

Answer 1

You have to clone the VI. You say you have tried to use the .vit way of cloning...but in the example there is no use of VIT and the VI is called statically. If you want to open multiple instances of the same VI and the VI has a user interface (or needs to be a unique instance of the VI every time even though it's called the same place in the diagram, not the case here though) you need to do it dynamically, i.e. with an invoke node.
There is actually a problem doing just that, it causes a memory leak...but that won't be a problem unless the VI is called frequently / the software will be running over very long periods of time. You can see an example of it here (attached to my reply to the question):
http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&
RPAGEID=135&HOID=506500000008000000A07D0000&UCATEGORY_0=_49_%24_6_&UCATEGORY_S=0&USEARCHCONTEXT_QUESTION_0=VI+cloning&USEARCHCONTEXT_QUESTION_S=0
About the memory leak problem:
http://exchange.ni.com/servlet/ProcessRequest?RHIVEID=101&RPAGEID=135&HOID=506500000008000000B7A40000&UCATEGORY_0=_49_%24_6_&UCATEGORY_S=0&USEARCHCONTEXT_QUESTION_0=VI+cloning&USEARCHCONTEXT_QUESTION_S=0
MTO