Allow labeling to the probe

[Tushar_Jambhekar]

When debugging labview application. If we use lot many probes at a time then it becomes to complicated to understand which probe is which one.

The main reason for confusion is probes are named by probe number and its data type.

1. In LabVIEW we can label the wire by right clicking on wire and selecting the visible items>>label. However this label name is not used in probe. This name should be used as probe name.
2. Naming each and every wire is not possible, so in probe window user should be able quickly edit the name of probe (using F2 as shortcut key) to give name of his choice

Also when I manually name the probe it should update the label.text property of the wire

[X.]

Usually your probe will take the name of the upstream control, VI terminal, etc, except for function terminals (probe 4 and 9 below):

I would file the function terminal "feature" as a bug or "expected" behavior to be implemented (it might be "intended" by NI and then good luck to have then change their mind).

I'd vote for a probe on a wire to adopt the name of that wire, provided it has one. So Kudo on this aspect of your suggestion.

I am not sure I would bother naming my probes once all the above features are implemented, as probes are by definition temporary...

[Tushar_Jambhekar]

Thanks for your reply X

>>>I am not sure I would bother naming my probes once all the above features are implemented, as probes are by definition temporary...

I agree with you that the probes are temporary. however i do feel that naming them with proper label will dramatically reduce the debugging time.

e.g.

it is always good if i name the probe as PressEng. it makes my debugging easire as a dont need to see where the probe. this is really useful when you are probing more than 8 - 10 values which are spread across various VIs and you need to toggle between then to see which probe is which one.

I understand that naming probes itself time consuming and they are temporary. thats why i asked "Also when I manually name the probe it should update the label.text property of the wire"

so if you name a probe then delete that probe and after some time put probe on same wire you dont need to rename it again

[FraggerFox]

I like this idea, this would be particularly useful when number of probes is large. However, most of the developed applications I debug would take the connector terminal names, and I am still comfortable with the amount of debugging I can do with multiple probes, since I usually focus on VI name in the probe section, and then focus on the probe value I am intersted in. Because probe names do not show up on function wire outputs, kudos to this idea, since this idea makes debugging even easier.

[falkpl]

One way to do this could be to allow labview to use the wire lable to as the default probe name, if the wire is not named, then use the default output terminal as is done now.  This would be more perminent and would require the user to only name the wire once as opposed to retype the probe each time it is created.

[wildcatherder]

I agree that this would be a very good idea.  

In this forum post

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/How-do-probes-get-named/m-p/1209983/highlight/true#M518459

Ravens Fan posts a workaround that results in custom-named probes but requires wiring a couple of extra components for each probe.

I have found this quite useful.

[doyles]

I believe this would be very helpful specifically when probing several different places.  In response to X. above, when you have two dozen probes from 6 or 7 different places, meaningful probe names can go a long way to quickly understanding what is happening in a full-speed running program.  The alternative (besides Ravesn Fan's workaround) is jumping from probe to probe trying to recall exactly which probe is which.  There is unnecessary time wasted and frustration trying to simply determine the correct probe at the correct time.

I've read several places that in LabVIEW the wire is the variable.  In a typical text-based programming lanquage you can use a Watch window for whatever variable you want. And the programmer names each variable explicitly (one way or another).  Without the ability of the probes to pick up on the wire names, LabVIEW programmers don't control the naming of the "variable" in the watch window.  This seems like it's a pretty basic tool for a developer.

[X.]

Just to clarify: I am in favor of this suggestion and kudoed it. I was just ad-libbing to NI's attention that there is an "unexpected" behavior in Probes missing to inherit the name of the wire they are probing. I was hoping to add a CAR to my garage, but as usual, I won't hold my breath...