Right-click to "Replace Stacked Sequence with Driven Case"

[tomlawton]

In maintaining code that dates back to LV2.0, I often come across the Stacked Sequence Structure 😞 , and find myself compelled to replace them with a driven case structure 🙂 - especially if I'm adding any new behaviours...

A right-click "Replace with driven case" would make the conversion much easier 🙂

One (perhaps?) oddity is that I like to drive my cases with strings, not enums, so I'd like the option to allow that. Obviously initially on replacement the cases would have to be simply numbered 1,2,3...; but then it would be great if as I edited the case names to something meaningful, the numbers feeding the shift register dynamically updated to match (but I can see that'd be difficult, and risky..!)

This is perhaps a differently-expressed duplicate of http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Permit-to-replace-Stacked-Sequence-for-a-For-Loop/idi-... and would also benefit from the introduction of http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Combine-While-Loop-and-Case-Structure-into-new-quot-St... .

[X.]

Do you really want that? A student left us a VI with about a hundred stacked cases in a sequence structure (and nested sequence structure within). I would dread leaving it to an automated tool to "convert" this into anything I would understand any better. Based on my experience with the "Diagram Cleaning" tool, or the "Create subVI" connector pane algorithm, etc, this would probably lead to manageable results only in the simplest of cases.

You would not really need that kind of help in this situation.

<off-topic>It seems that most LV productivity tools are actually tested internally on the simplest VI architectures (understandably). The limitations of the cleaning tool was acknowledged by Darren Nattinger in a recent Webcast, where it was recommended to limit it to simple VIs (or diagram parts in LV 2012)</off-topic>

PS: you probably mean "state machine"?

PPS: I am still considering my legal options against NI with respect to the the case I evoked above, considering the waste of time it will represent for me.

[tomlawton]

X- you're probably right- it would make a horrible mess on some occasions!

I've never used diagram cleanup- at least, not without immediately hitting cmd-Z! I also do physical wiring; I don't think the guys who write the autoroute algorithms do...

Re your PS, I think it was in the release notes for LV3, or maybe 4, I first saw stacked sequences deprecated, with the suggestion of using a "driven case" instead- and that nomenclature has stuck with me; maybe saves confusion with the (confusing?!) state chart module.. 😉

Re your PPS... I've never tried to balance the accounts of the time I waste straightening wires with the time I save making UIs, and seeing my data properly everywhere... ;-D

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 2 kudos within 2 years after posting will be automatically declined.