This Wednesday: "What are the Top 100 Best Practices for using the Project?"

[VSchlecht]

This Wednesday's ALARM meeting will feature a preview of the inaugural CLD Summit here in Colorado on September 27.

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The topic for the meeting will be "What are the Top 100 Best Practices for using the Project?" Well, maybe the list is a little shorter; however this will be a discussion, not just a presentation, on best practices. We'll include gotchas to watch out for as well. The "price" to attend will be to bring an idea or question that relates to the project and automation of activities around the project.

We'll also have a sneak peak at a few 2012 utilities that aid the project, and we'll check out a few scripting tools that are floating around the community. So bring an appetite for pizza and a great project idea!

6:30-8:30 p. m.

Colorado School of Mines, CTLM Computer Lab, Room 123, Golden, CO 80401

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[Dave_Thomson]

Thanks for the presentation, Nancy.  I had a couple of Project-related questions that I didn't manage to get in last night, and thought I'd see if there was any feedback from ALARM members on them:

We talked about organizing VIs within the project within logic groups, and I think we even touched on how that can/should be mirrored in the file structure on disk - folders for different instrument drivers, program components, documentation, etc.  I add one other feature to my folder structure:  a subdirectory of the main project directory called "Project Files", which is where I put the actual xml files for the .lvproj, lvlibs, etc.  I also put the VI Tree vi there, icon files, and other project support files.  Sometimes I put a sub-directory inside it for test programs and another for design templates.  I was curious if others do something similar, or if anyone sees advantages/disadvantages to this.  Being a bit organizationally-compulsive, I started doing this so that those pesky .xlm files didn't show up in Windows Explorer in my root project directory.

Also, you talked about how you organize every sub-vi into a project virtual folder, according to function.  I think I understood that you advocated having every sub-vi included somewhere, rather than relying on the Dependencies folder, is that right?  I populate my Items view much more sparsely.  I only put things in there that I find I need to open fairly often:  the VI Tree vi, the Main.vi, dynamically-called top level VIs, etc.  Any comments on that approach?  I think I missed why you feel it is worthwhile including every sub-vi explicitly.

DaveT

[cirrusio]

Dave,

I have a brief comment regarding this approach.  My experience regarding a sparsely populated project tree is that this can be a real pain when attempting to maintain it down the line (particularly with large projects).  Placing everything in the main portion of the tree and then organizing that portion of the project (whether via autopopulating folders or otherwise) provides some logically consistency and makes things easier to find.  Otherwise, when you have a piece of hardware that becomse obsolete or code that needs to be upgraded further along, you can find yourself very quickly opening up 50 VIs to drill down to the one that you are interested in everytime you go to edit that portion of the code.  Been there and done that - tends to be a time waster.

That's my two cents.

m