reducing the size of the front panel in edit mode

[exo]

The block diagram is two screens wide and growing.

[andre.buurman@carya]

Redesign your app using subVI for pieces of code that occur often (functions) and use state-machines (usually a good way to keep your code on one screen). If a states code becomes too large, either find function in your code or divide it up in more states/cases.

A growing block diagram indicates a false design to me.

André

[eek]

Hi exo,

A block diagram that is two screens large sounds like it is in some dire need of refactoring. This is a lesson straight out of one of our customer education courses, LabVIEW Basics II, that discusses methods of maintaining large, complex programs.

Andre's suggestion on creating subvi's for any duplicated logic on your block diagram is a great one. And here's a quick and easy trick to show off to your fellow LV programmers:

On your block diagram, highlight the code you intend to make into a subvi by clicking and dragging the mouse. Once you've drawn a selection box around the block diagram objects, go to Edit>>Create SubVI and voila! The code is now replaced by a nice, neat subvi.

Andre also mentioned state machines, a very useful design pattern in LabVIEW. A state machine can maintain relatively complex decision making and yet appears as very simple and easy-to-understand code on your block diagram. Check out this Developer Zone article to learn more about incorporating state machine architecture in your application.

These suggestions should help you shrink down that mammoth block diagram to a single monitor display without having to scroll.

Cheers,

Emilie K. | Applications Engineer | National Instruments

[SB_123]

I have been searching for this solution for a while and now I have figured it out at least for my case. Therefore, I am writing solution incase it will help someone with similar issue.

a. Go to File -->VI Properties and select category "Window Size" and set the Width and Height to 0 (for both) and hit Ok.

I was using modifying already existing projects for my work, and didn't realize it had a panel size predefined. This was the solution for me and now I can resize the VI Front panel.

[XM43]

Hi Eek,

---

And here's a quick and easy trick to show off to your fellow LV programmers:

On your block diagram, highlight the code you intend to make into a subvi by clicking and dragging the mouse. Once you've drawn a selection box around the block diagram objects, go to Edit>>Create SubVI and voila! The code is now replaced by a nice, neat subvi.

Thank you for the trick, I cannot stop using it. I am making subVIs of codes that does not really need to be in a subVI hihi.