New plots should be drawn on top of older ones in a XY-Graph

[UrsL]

I rediscovered a kind of an annoying behavior with multiplot XY-Graphs which appears to have existed since LabVIEW's emergence. Say I want to use the XY-Graph like a curve tracer, thus adding XY data pairs to an existing multiplot XY-Graph by passing the array of array clusters around in loop shift registers and fill in new data as it's produced. This all works well BUT when adding multiple plots in different colors it shows that consecutive plots are always drawn underneath the already existing ones instead of the other way around. I find that new plots should be drawn over already existing ones also according to the sequence shown in the plot legend.

If your new plot has the same or similar values than the previous one then the second plot will be hidden underneath the first one. You can only see a second one if the values are different. It's counterintuitive I think and I wonder why it has always been like that.

I plead for a XY-Graph option along with a property node to change this so that new plots cover old ones when they intercept. The legend sequence should not be changed because the top to bottom order is correct. 

I demo VI of the misbehavior is attached 

I hope I get enough support for this to be done. 

Urs

Urs Lauterburg

Physics demonstrator

Physikalisches Institut

University of Bern

Switzerland

[JackDunaway]

More generally: to be able to programmatically set the z-order precedence of the plots. This was described by Xavier on the second page of comments on Direct access to Plot Visible property on plot legend.

In the meantime,  the workaround is relegated to adding your "newest" plots to the beginning of the plot array rather than the end. In your example, you could build the arrays indexing backwards rather than forwards.

To me, descending or ascending z-order based on plot index is po-tay-to to po-tah-to. Having control over each plot's arbitrary z-order without needing to shuffle plot arrays would be powerful. 

[Intaris]

I think setting the Z-order of the plots is a logical choice.

I also agree, however, that the current Z-order of plots is the wrong way around so that could be fixed really quick whereas the latter might take a bit more work.

[SULLutions]

I agree that the top plot in the legend should ordinarily be the foremost ("top") plot in the graph, but there are instances where data plots should be listed first in the legend and derivative plots should be foremost in the graph but lowest in the legend (so their names can be hidden completely), so being able to set the Z-order would be much preferred over just fixing the current misleading order.  

[wlm]

Yes, the option to reverse the order of the plots so that new plots are on top should be added at a minimum. I see setting an arbitary Z-order as the proper way to go. As is, we can re-arrange the order of items in a cluster from the front panel but need to resort to the block diagram and rewire plots to change their order in an XY graph.

[LuI]

Agree with this idea! For me it was sufficient if the legend was left as is, but the drawing order of the plots could be reversed by a property of the graph.

[pallen]

I just spent a bunch of time working around this problem.  Just reversing the order wasn't good enough, since it messed up the plot colors on me.  Being able to set this with a property node or some other method would be awesome.