Case Merger function

[Mads]

Every now and then I (or others) have two case or event structures that I would like to merge, either completely or just copy some cases from one to the other. If we are talking about one or a couple of cases, doing it by creating empty cases and copying the code from one structure to the other as is the option today is fine. If the number is much higher this gets quickly tedious, and we have to come up with alternative solutions.

(Making a subVI of the two and add another case structure around them, as described in the discussion linked to above, is one -  but that changes the layout and adds another selection to the logic).

So how could it be handled by the IDE instead and made much easier?
A case merger function.

Here are a few quickideas on how to implement it (but any similar solution would be better than none);

1.  Copy-Paste-Merger: Selecting the frame of structure 1, copying it, selecting frame of structure 2 and pasting will bring up a merge dialog with the following options:
   
   a) Replace structure?
   b) Merge structures (all cases)?
   c) Merge selected case only into structure?
   
   Now if the user selects to merge the whole or just the top/selected part of the structures (b or c) the function has to handle overlapping cases (just like the OS does when copying into a folder with existing content) by asking the user whether to keep the old ones, replace with the new ones or leave them as non-unique values (or add an index to the value) for the user to tidy up manually afterwards.
   
   
2. Drag and drop merger; identical to the previous suggestion - but instead of copy/paste the transaction is initiated by dragging structure 2 over structure 1 and e.g. holding it with an edge aligned when dropping to indicate that it is not intended to go *into* the other structure.
   
   
3. A merge option that can be called from the menu or contextual menus on case/event structures. The advantage of this would be the ability to add more complex mergers where you would want to pick frames x, y and z from structure 1 to merge with structure(s) 2 etc... This option could alternatively be combined with the other two and used as the dialog when those are initiated.