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Brandyn

Replace Bundle/Unbundle by name with same elements

Status: New

When replacing a bundle by name function with an Unbundle by name function or vice versa, the element names should be maintained.  Currently when you replace this function with the other, LabVIEW does not maintain the same element names. 

Certified LabVIEW Architect
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9 Comments
RavensFan
Knight of NI

What you are asking for has logic to it.  But is it really necessary?  When do you ever need to replace a bundle with an unbundle or vice versa.  If have travelled down one path so far that you've set a lot of element names on the function that you want to maintain, shouldn't you have figured out long before then that you actually needed the other function?

 

Also, by changing from one function to the other, all of your wire sources are going to become sinks, or vice versa.  You are going to wind up with so many broken wires that dealing with reassigning element names will be the least of the problems you'll need to fix.

Brandyn
Member
Well I was already thinking of creating a RCF plugin for it. But in the architectures that I use, my state machines have a cluster that stores data and every state reads and writes to it. So often times I do use an bundle by name function, select my elements, update the data and then use the unbundle by name in another state to read the data.
Certified LabVIEW Architect
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JÞB
Knight of NI

" So often times I do use an bundle by name function, select my elements, update the data and then use the unbundle by name in another state to read the data."

 

This sounds a lot more like a data structure problem than a flaw in LabVIEW.  Properly organizing your data into logically related clusters and ordering the elements logically will buy you a lot more than a plug-in 


"Should be" isn't "Is" -Jay
Brandyn
Member

"This sounds a lot more like a data structure problem than a flaw in LabVIEW.  Properly organizing your data into logically related clusters and ordering the elements logically will buy you a lot more than a plug-in"

 

Different organization of the data won't neccesarily solve the problem.  The issue is if I have an Unbundle by name function with certain elements selected and I want to (in another case, or instance or place) update the same elements I will have now drop a Bundle by name function, wire up, and then select each element one by one.  Instead what I want is to just select the existing Unbundle by name, right click and make a bundle by name with the same elements saving me time from having to navigate all of them.   

 

I do appreciate the feedback though.

Certified LabVIEW Architect
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fabric
Active Participant

I can definitely see a use case for this but I'm hesitant to gove kudos to the idea the way it is currently presented.

 

My use case would be more like: I have an unbundle with a bunch sub-elements exposed, and I later want to re-bundle these same items. What I *really* need is a right-click option to "create complementary method", i.e select a bundle and create the equivalent unbundle, or vice versa.  (Sometimes the IPE structure helps here, but it has its own quirks...)

 

For this use case the original idea just facilitates a workaround to achieve the final goal. Why not just cut to the chase and allow easier creation of the complementary method?

Brandyn
Member
Precisely
Certified LabVIEW Architect
Certified Professional Instructor
laurent74380
Member

I wanted to post a similar idea, with the following title: "Change to Bundle/Unbundle (by Name)"

 

Like change to Control/Indicator, we should have the possibility the right click a bundle (connected or not) and change its modus.

 

Very often, you start wiring a bundle and notice you picked the wrong one. Or when incrementing (+1 Function) a counter from the cluster for instance, you often need to place both bundle and unbundle with the same parameters and connect them together. It could be usefull to create the unbundle, copy it and change the copy into a bundle.

 

LVIdea.png

X.
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

I have been bitten many times by this "feature" (or lack thereof rather).

I didn't get much votes but this typically the kind of functionality that I am always surprised to see lacking in LabVIEW, the quintessential graphical programming language.

X.
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

In retrospect, I think this is topic for a CAR.

Let me illustrate:

 

I have this on my diagram:

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-11 at 13.41.49.png

 

and want to do some data manipulation on a similar cluster I have upstream. In other word, I need an identical unbundle by name.

What do I do? I copy this BBN node and use "Replace by...>>Unbundle by Name".

Here is the result:

 

Screen Shot 2016-04-11 at 13.42.12.png

 

That is not very useful (luckily, this cluster only contains 4 elements).

This probably would be fine as a shortcut plugin, but I would argue that this is an unexpected behavior and as such filed as a CAR (before this idea is filed as declined by the Decliner-in-Chief).