Recalling front panel

I know it is possible to show a VI's front panel when it is called by selecting "show front panel when called" in the VI Properties. If you were to close this vi or stop it, you could once again view its front panel when it was called again. Now with that said... Is it possible to call a VI's front panel many times if you don't close it or stop it?

Are you asking about showing multiple instances of the same front panel at once, or just the ability to open and close a front panel while the VI is running. If it's the latter, you can use the VI Server to do so. Get a reference to the VI using the Open VI Reference primitive, then wire that into a property node and select Front Panel Windowpen. If you set that to true, the FP will be visible, if it is false, the FP is hidden.
If you are trying to show multiple instances of the front panel, that's more difficult, but also possible. If you want to do that, you will have to clone the VI in question or use a VI Template instead of a normal VI. What you do from there depends on why you want multiple instances -- is it for showing historical data, or for showing multiple versions of the same data?

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Save and recall front panel configuration on FPGA

First of all, I am a first time user of Labview. The application is with an FPGA on a NI-9146 board.
My question is, I would like to save the front panel settings when I exit the application, then recall them the next time the application is started.
Seems to be a few ways to do this but are not supported with the FPGA module.
The application is fairly straight forward timing and the Windows host PC will provide a GUI to the operator.
Solved!
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Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but this task is more tedious then it needs to be.
The normal way of doing this on the FPGA is to plop down a FPGA read function for every control on the FPGA front panel, then write them to a file. Probably using an OpenG function, but really something like the binary write would work if you don't expect to add/remove items. Then when the application starts you need to reverse the process ploping down a FPGA write function for every control.
Now there is a slighly easier way that in theory works in a limited use case. The FPGA VI when running is just like a normal VI and you can get a reference to it. Here you could run the OpenG Write Panel to INI, and Read Panel from INI. These are two canned functions that save tons of time. Now the reason this might not work for most FPGA developers is because in the end, the goal is to not see the FPGA VI and instead only run the bit file and call into the FPGA using the hooks NI provides. It sounds like you are going to have the VI shown anyway so this method may actually work for you.
It does kinda suck and I think it would be nice if NI had a way to read and write all FPGA front panel controls at once for things like this.
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Open front panel of sub vi when called - how?

Hello,
I have a VI with several sub VIs.
I want some of the sub VI front panels to be opened, if they are not yet opened and if they are called but I want them to stay in the background.
There are two SubVI Node setups: "Open Front Panel when loaded" and "show front panel when called"
Both are not what I want. If I select "show front panel when called", then the front panels are opened but flickering because they are called often and alternately.
Greetings Johannes
Using LabVIEW 7.1 and 2009 recently
Solved!
Go to Solution.

johanneshoer wrote:
No, no issue with my code :-)
Yeah, we've heard that one before...
@smercurio_fc: With your example I can see if a subVI is opened or not, but how can I open the subVI during run time if it is not opened
Just call the method with it set to "write" (right-click and select "Change to Write"). I don't recall if LV 7.0 has a Front Panelpen method. Check the LabVIEW manual.

LV 8.5 opens all sub-VI front panels

Hello,
Recently I again saw a strange occurrance that has happened to me about 10-12 times over the past year. Here specifically I am using LV 8.5 with the cRIO and FPGA module. When I was running a new RT VI from the developer environment, (deploying to the cRIO) the result looked something like this:
All the sub-VI front panels are opened, and shown in their reserved or running state.
None of these VIs are set to show front panel when called or opened, but all are sub-VIs of the top level VI within the project. It seems to have replicated a "Find all VIs in memory, within the project" and then "Show front panel" Invoke. The troubling thing is that this is not really repeatable, when I have closed all the VIs and run the VI again, it is fine. I have seen the same behavior in LV 8.2, 8.21 as well as when deploying to cFP-2120 or when on a Host computer.
Has anyone else seen this or are there any ideas of what is going on?
Thanks,
Mello
Message Edited by Mellobuck on 12-11-2007 01:17 PM
Message Edited by Mellobuck on 12-11-2007 01:17 PM
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Multiple Windows.jpg ‏117 KB

Well now that I have seen to image, I recall having seen this myself.
Like you, it was when I was deploying to an RT target and I was not able to recreate this behaviour.
It was either an 8.0 or a 8.2 app.
So all I can do is confirm that you are not alone, but can not offer a solution.
Ben
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LV 8.0.1 'NOT RESPONDING' and/or 'split' and unusable front panel while scrolling

Hello,
Is anyone aware of any display or front-panel glitches and bugs with LV 8.0.1? I have been using LV for years, but I have never seen the front panel tear itself (literally) in sections while I use the standard scoll bars at the edges of teh screen, then become completely unusable and go into [NOT RESPONDING] mode (???). In other words, my front panel displays have always moved as one continuous piece when scrolling. During these recent episodes, I would use the scroll bars and parts of my front panel displays would not move while the other section(s) tore away and scrolled as I commanded. When this happens, my entire PC would slow down, the CPU usage would rise and a approach 100%, and the VI was unusable. I have been writing a particular VI for several months, starting in LV 6.1, then LV 8.0 PRO-DEV, and recently upgraded to the LV 8.0.1 'maintenance' release. The problem that I describe here began to occur within two weeks of the maintenance upgrade. The problem seemed to be propagating to my back-up version after I opened each VI in unsuccessful attempts to find a VI that did not appear corrupted. It seemed as if any VI that I opened was going to be plagued by the bug that I described above and I thought that I was going to lose months of expensive work and my job!!!!. In a last ditch effort ( and a stroke of pure genius) I started saving some of these coorupt version as 'PREVIOUS' in LV7.1 format. This seems to have turned the situation around, for now, and saved my VIs from becoming corrupted and completely unusable.
Please let me know if anyone else has seen this. Also, please let me know how to avoid this, in the future. Does this indicate corruption of my LV 8.0.1 PRO-DEV environment or the VI files (or both)? Does NI have tools to correct these corruptions?
Thank you.

Thank you. I can only point to the following events/ techniques that were somewhat different from my previous experiences/ techniques:
1) Performed 'SAVE AS... ' new file name to these files over several months and several times a day using similar filenames with only one number character different between them
2) Logging long data files to the root C: drive and closing in on less < 5GB HDD remaining (could this be overwriting soem temp files that LV uses to manag graphics???)
3) After saving to LV 7.1 and re-opening with LV 8.0, I get a message that is new to me that explained something about wiring a Boolean constant to a case structure and how LV 7.1 or previous used this to keep a sub-vi in memory (???). Unfortunately for me, I did not capture the exact syntax of this message and I do not wish to intentionally repeat this graphical feature.
4) I copied a small block of code that contained a 'cloned' sub-vi from one block diagram to the a similar VI that , shortly afterward, exhibited the front-panle 'tearing' feature. This is something that I usually do not do, and, again, is one of the only new actions from anything that I have done in LV for the past several years.
5) After the message described in (3), above, the rescued LV 7.1 version had moved a handful of the most recently added indicators to a very remote location, about 30 seconds of edge-scrolling time, to the left of my front panel graphics. I perfromed a 'drag' operation by selecting these and bumping them to the right edge of the screen for about 30 seconds to get them back to the vicinity of my front-panel graphics. I have never experienced a VI that shifted inidcators so far off the edge of the screen.
These are the only ' unique' events that I can recall before the 'tear; effect.
Thank you.

Aud2 ZS platnm I get I/O from front panel, but no output from REAR OF CA

I had a Audigy2 in my Dell, worked fine. I needed MORE I/O ports. I got a Audigy2 ZS platinum for the front panel (extra I/O) front panel works fine, sound card sounds fine, all is well - except I get no output from the back of the card. (certainly this isn't a "front OR rear" sort of thing?)
About ready to return it.

I DO get digital output from the front and back (front panel on front of Dell) and back of card. I don't get ANALOG output from card. I thought I recall a selecti've click box in the software that said "digital only" where is that. (I HATE creatives software - SO MANY LITTLE UTIL PROGRAMS THAT DO LITTLE OR NOTHING EACH) you have to HUNT through them all to find the option you need.

Open and close a vi front panel dynamically

I created a main vi panel that display all the signal names. I like the main vi to open a new plot screen when I double click on the signal name. I was able to do that using invoke node. But I when I close the plot screen by clicking on the Window "Close" button, the main vi was not able to open a new one again. So I disabled the Window "Close" button and only use the "Stop" button coded in while loop in the blockdigram of the plot screen. It worked, but the plot screen is still open and changed to editing mode. Is there an easy way to close the plot screen by only one click. Another question is that how does the main vi can open multiple plot screens. Thanks for your advice.

I think I know what happens:
If you close the front panel of a sub-vi, the code is still running, so the VI doesn't terminate and somehow you can't address it (it don't know how you communicate with your sub-vi).
So in your sub-vi you should monitor the panel-close event, and finish the code of the VI and finish the VI
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Open and Close Front Panel of SubVI

Hi all,
Running LabVIEW 2011 on Windows 7 x64. I am trying to get a subVI front panel to open from my main FP with the press of a button and then close with a button press in the subVI. Here is the piece from my main FP that calls the VI and opens the FP
Plots is defined in another loop and all of the loops are in a flat sequence. I did it this way because I want it to start with the first press and not stop my main loop from running. I have moved the item in the left loop around a lot so I'm not sure if I can run that in the same loop as the event or not. Either way opening the VI seems to work fine.
The problem shows up when trying to close the subVI for the SECOND time. The code is here:
As I said, the first time I open and close the VI everything works as I expect it should. I am then able to open it again but now the "blank button" doesn't function and I can't close the window or even open the block diagram to probe anything. I have been trying to figure this out for awhile, any insite would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Its good that you found the bug.
This code may serve as a way for you to compare notes.
Ben
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I have a VI and an attched .txt data file. Now I want to read the data from the .txt file and display it as an array in the front panel. But the result is not right. Any help?

I have a VI and an attched .txt data file. Now I want to read the data from the .txt file and display it as an array in the front panel. But the result is not right. Any help?
Attachments:
try2.txt ‏2 KB
read_array.vi ‏21 KB

The problem is in the delimiters in your text file. By default, Read From Spreadsheet File.vi expects a tab delimited file. You can specify a delimiter (like a space), but Read From Spreadsheet File.vi has a problem with repeated delimiters: if you specify a single space as a delimiter and Read From Spreadsheet File.vi finds two spaces back-to-back, it stops reading that line. Your file (as I got it from your earlier post) is delimited by 4 spaces.
Here are some of your choices to fix your problem.
1. Change the source file to a tab delimited file. Your VI will then run as is.
2. Change the source file to be delimited by a single space (rather than 4), then wire a string constant containing one space to the delimiter input of Read From Spreadsheet File.vi.
3. Wire a string constant containing 4 spaces to the delimiter input of Read From Spreadsheet File.vi. Then your text file will run as is.
Depending on where your text file comes from (see more comments below), I'd vote for choice 1: a tab delimited text file. It's the most common text output of spreadsheet programs.
Comments for choices 1 and 2: Where does the text file come from? Is it automatically generated or manually generated? Will it be generated multiple times or just once? If it's manually generated or generated just once, you can use any text editor to change 4 spaces to a tab or to a single space. Note: if you want to change it to a tab delimited file, you can't enter a tab directly into a box in the search & replace dialog of many programs like notepad, but you can do a cut and paste. Before you start your search and replace (just in the text window of the editor), press tab. A tab character will be entered. Press Shift-LeftArrow (not Backspace) to highlight the tab character. Press Ctrl-X to cut the tab character. Start your search and replace (Ctrl-H in notepad in Windows 2000). Click into the Find What box. Enter four spaces. Click into the Replace With box. Press Ctrl-V to paste the tab character. And another thing: older versions of notepad don't have search and replace. Use any editor or word processor that does.

Square root symbol in front panel

how to inser a square root symbol in the front panel in the given vi snippet? i want to write V3 instead of sqrt(3). using Labview 8.6.
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
GUI.png ‏15 KB

Hi,
Thank you all.. I could insert the sqrt symbol in the GUI.
I also want to initialise one of the strings with the same symbol. So I copied the sqrt symbol and inserted that in place of "sqrt(3)" . but it switched back to a special character. I selected that special character and selected symbol font from the font menu, then it switched back to sqrt symbol. but as soon as i clicked the mouse outside, it reverted to the old special character(may be the one corresponding to 0xD3 in Application Font).
How to fix this?
Attachments:
sqrtinit.png ‏5 KB
sqrt_reverted.png ‏5 KB

Front Panel Mass Binding Project Variables Issue

Hello -
When attempting to bind controls to shared variables through the front panel mass binding option, there is an issue where you can not seem to bind a "project item" to the control. The method of binding I am using is to export a text list of control names, urls, mode, and function to a text editor utilizing the front panel binding mass configuration options. The text editor shows, in the fourth column, a "0" for no function, a "1" for network item, and a "2" for project item. when attempting to import the list back into the front panel binding mass configuration, all "2" indications become "1", as all items are treated as network. Thus one can not effectively bind to a project shared variable item.
The binding works fine manually by means of utilizing the properties selection of the control, but it is difficult to do this for 821 controls, as in my application.
My application is based on a OPC served group of 821 variables which are linked to controls and indicators through the shared variable representation for each item created in the multiple variable editor.
Does anyone have a work around for this issue, as it is a showstopper right now, ie, you can not effectively bind a large quantity of controls or indicators to project located shared variables as required.
The rationale behind utilizing project located variables instead of network located variables is to reduce the amount of calls to the OPC server which was causnig a large latency in the refresh of the 821 items. With the items defined as shared variables within the project, a single call is issued, which has tremendously sped up the refresh cycle for the list of variables.
Thank you in advance for your insight in this matter,
John DeCroos

Hello Brian A.,
In response to you comment --
"in 2006, and John did not follow up with any more information for Efosa"
-- a great deal of information was provided to NI (Efosa and many, many others, up to the product manager for the DCS module). I have never heard back on a fix for this bug for the identified version of LabVIEW. The reply by Efosa here was well after we had shipped our product -- (please see date + Efosa's apology) -- we had found our own solution as is identified in the original post.
My solution was, as is also indicated in my original post, to manually bind each variable. This was unbelievably time consuming, but was all I had.
The version of software I am now working on uses far less variables, manually bound to avoid the multiple binding issue we had in the past.
I have checked the mass binding function in LV 8.5.1, it works fine now. I guess it would have been nice to have had a reply that the bug had been resolved ---- would have helped me out a bit.
Thank you,
John DeCroos

Reading main VI front panel in SubVI

Hi,
I'm trying to create a subVI that writes a header text file containing info on essential parameters in my measurements. My mainVI front panel has a few dozen controls, some of them contained in a handful of clusters.
What I'd want is just to be able to access and read the values at the subVI to construct the string I want to write to the file.
I wouldn't like to proceed the dumb way, i.e., building an array of clusters or individual controls or references to them and passing that to my subVI (and, obviously not passing each individual control/cluster as a subVI input).
I figured I'd like to have some kind of refnum of the mainVI frontpanel passed to my subVI and dig use a big pile of property nodes to dig out the info that i need, inside the SubVI. Is this a feasible solution and if so, what's the way to conduct it? If not, what would be a better way?
As before, I'm using LV7 so in case you answer with block diagram examples, I'd appreciate screenshots of them.
Thanks,
Lauri

Vostokki wrote:
I'm trying to create a subVI that writes a header text file containing info on essential parameters in my measurements. My mainVI front panel has a few dozen controls, some of them contained in a handful of clusters.
What I'd want is just to be able to access and read the values at the subVI to construct the string I want to write to the file.
I wouldn't like to proceed the dumb way, i.e., building an array of clusters or individual controls or references to them and passing that to my subVI (and, obviously not passing each individual control/cluster as a subVI input).
Lauri
Actually that is the preferred way to do. Why you may ask? It is because you decouple the functionality (creating your log file header) from your specific user interface. By doing so you can reuse this VI in other places or applications. By using the references directly this ties the subVI to the calling VI. Unless the subVI is specifically doing something to the UI itself a subVI should avoid accessing data it needs via direct references. It should require the data to be wired in with the appropriate clusters, arrays or whatever your data needs are.
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How to open remote front panel of vi's within an executable from an executable.

How do I remotely open front panels of subvi's contained within an executable, where both computers just have LabVIEW Real Time loaded (programs are run as executables)? I want to use the Method: Remote Panel Open Connection to Server to make this work. I have been getting error 1032 "VI Server Access Denied". I do not want to use the web page method (connection is too slow when controlling front panel objects and I can not programmatically exit out (release control of vi) of the web page).
Ex.
PC1: Has executable1 using Remote Panel Open Connection to Server Method etc. code inside. This program will make a call to executable2 (on PC2) to open up different vi front panels (within executable2), so the controls can be changed from PC1. I want to be able to make changes to the vi's running on PC2 from PC1.
PC2: Has executable2 containing several subvi's.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but here is how to launch executables that can interact
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Conditionally include Front Panel of a Subvi in an EXE

I want to make two versions of an EXE, one "normal" version and a debug version. I know how to set conditional disable symbols via pre/post build actions (btw. NI: these variables should REALLY be defineable per build specification; even bare command line C compilers are easier to use in that regard than Labview).
The "normal" version won't show anything but the main vi. The front panels shouldn't even be included in the exe. For the debug version I want to show the front panels on request (I've queues for sending that to the subvis). Simply calling "FP.open" does not work with an compiled exe, because I get a "resource not found" error (the front panel of the subvi is not compiled into the exe). I tried setting show "frontpanel when called" which forces the FP to be compiled into the exe, but then the FP will shortly flash on the screen, even when the first command of the subvi is hiding the frontpanel.
How can I make a subvi depending on a conditional disable symbol include its front panel into the exe without forcing it to show its frontpanel at the same time?

There are a number of things which cause LV to keep a FP when building. These include things like open when called (which you understandably don't like), but also various things which statically require the front panel. Things like changing the scrollbar settings or creating a property node for a control on the FP. Personally, my preference is for the latter because you can document it better.
If you don't actually mind whether the FP is included, you can just do that and be done with it. If you really do mind, you can check whether placing the property node for the control in a conditional disable structure has an impact on this or not. I have no idea whether it does or not, since I don't know exactly how LV will treat the code in the disabled case.
The other alternative is making two builds and configuring it for each VI:
The disadvantage here is that you have to manage two builds and do this manually for each VI.
If you want, there's a related idea on the idea exchange, but it won't actually help in your case, because it's not conditional:
http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Add-a-property-to-guarantee-that-the-front-panel-of-a-...
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How to open front panel of a VI running in RT.

Hi,
I have an application to read the encoder position using the cRIO program. I have made an executable and this application runs as startup application whenever the controller reboots. Right now, i am accessing the VI of the startup exe through Remote Panel connection. This works fine but everytime i close the remote panel , i have to reboot the controller for the next view.
So is there any alterntaive to open the front panel of the VI.
I tried using VIServer but ran into errors. (i tried using front panel -open property node.did not work)
Also i do not have any VIs stored on the controller. Only the exe is stored on the ni-rt/startup folder on the RT controller.
Please let me know how to open this VI.
Thanks.

Hi Ben,
When i close the remote front panel the first time, i am terminating the RT VI which is running on startup.
So i had to reboot everytime to access the remote VI. I guess that the VI (exe) should be continuosly running when the RT is started up. The remote panel only should be opened and closed. After I close the remote panel , i want a windows VI to be opened up.
I have a Windows VI which programmatically opens connection to the RT server for opening the remote panel. The VI runs. When the user clicks Exit on this RT VI, the VI running is stopped and then another windows VI opens up. This works fine for first time. Since the RT VI is terminated, second time , if I run, it says, VI not in server memory.
Is there a method to close the remote panel programmatically in the RT VI itself. I have a Exit button in this RT VI, so if the user clicks, Exit, the program has to be running, but the remote panel has to close. There is a method called close connection to client , but this does not work in RT , as this requires VI path.. Right now , when the remote panel RT VI is launced, to close the remote panel, i click on the 'close' button on the VI title bar. Again when the remote panel is launched, there is no error. but is there a method to close the remote panel in the server(RT VI itself). i have attached the VI.
Thank you.
Attachments:
Dummytest.vi ‏39 KB

Recalling front panel

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