VI Properties "Documentation" under Windows Explorer?

[Stranman]

Is there any way to view a VI's Documentation property while browsing a folder of vi's for re-use from an OLD project, say in Windows Explorer?

[Ben]

I know of no way (but would like to learn if there is) but lacking that, a Tree.vi  

(also known as a catalog.vi or FakeRoot.vi) will let you open all VI's is a collection and using the VI hierachy, you can read the help by floating over them with the help window open.

I'll watch for other suggestions.

Ben

[MikeS81]

Hi Stranman,

it would be possible if you write your own Windows Explorer Plugin which is able to get this info. 🙂

Mike

[Omar_II]

I wrote something that did this in LabVIEW using scripting.

It searched directories looking for *.vi

Returns the description and the version of LabVIEW the VI was written in.

I could even view the front panel.

I'll have to see if I can find it.

[Stranman]

Yeah, thanks for the replies.  I didn't think there was, unless I coded something up myself. 

I didn't want to spend the time, if I didn't have to and if somebody has something coded up already, even better.

[F._Schubert]

Do you need to get a win explorer integration or does a txt file output already help? It's 10 min to do it.

Felix

[PhillipBrooks]

The attached zip file contains a tool that I created a couple of years ago to perform our upgrade from LV 7.0 to 8.6.

The tool uses the right click context menu to view or update the VI documentation, check the version of a VI, and perform other various file functions. (Open VIs & text files, run VI Analyzer, 'touch any file (update date time) etc...)  

The Top Level VI has almost no code. The guts are inside and XControl, which uses VI Server functions.

If you turn on context help (Control-H) from the top level VI, you can see the VI documentation for a VI without opening it.

This code is in LabVIEW 8.6. It was a fun project, and has a few things that could be cleaned up or done better, but the code had a limited purpose.

 

[PhillipBrooks]

Working from home today; thought I would finally get around to trying LabVIEW 2010. Here is a version of the tool saved for LV 2010.