How to pop out tabs from a tab control?

[RD46]

Hi, I'm new to labview and my main VI has a tab control with multiple tabs. Each tab has numeric and boolean controls/indicators. I want to add a pop out button that will allow each tab to be popped out into a window (possibly a sub VI for each tab) that runs simultaneously with the main VI. This will allow users to view multiple tabs at once and change the location/size of the windows containing the tabs. I also want the boolean controls (switches) to be able to be updated by the user from both the single tab window and the main VI.

I've googled extensively but couldn't find anything that would allow me to run the single tab at the same time as the main VI. I've also tried passing the values to the sub VI by reference, but the main VI would freeze due to the sub VI continuously running (while loop wired to a constant).

[terickson · Accepted solution]

I would recommend looking into sub-panels and re-entrant VI's.  This could give you the functionality you want.  Search the LabVIEW examples (Help->Find Examples) under Building User Interfaces\General.  There is:

Reentrant Panels

Simple Subpanel

Subpanel Templates

[cbutcher]

Hi!

With tabs, you can't. There's no separate VI 'powering'/running each tab, so no way to separately execute them (afaik).

On the other hand, there is an implementation on the forums here which details using pop-out SubPanels. These are containers which contain a running VI, and so it is possible to pop those out (although not automatically - you'll have to code quite a bit) and that would allow you to do what you describe.

[Ben]

I posted a zip of code to do what I call "Docking" in this thread.

I discussed using that technique in this paper

The following sequence of images shows the results....

More images in this Album.

Ben

[aputman]

Check out this demo.  I don't think it uses a tab control but it does allow you to pop out a graph into a separate window.  It's based on the Actor Framework. 

Edit:  For some reason, I am getting a malicious threat alert from AVAST when opening this page on the NI forums. 

[James_McN]

There is also a toolkit to help with this called XTabs from Saphir in the tools network. I have used that for this in past projects.

[cbutcher]

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@aputman wrote:

Check out this demo.  I don't think it uses a tab control but it does allow you to pop out a graph into a separate window.  It's based on the Actor Framework. 

Edit:  For some reason, I am getting a malicious threat alert from AVAST when opening this page on the NI forums. 

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Thanks for this link - I've been working on an AF project and already have 'SubpanelEnabledActor' as a high up part of my class hierarchy, so perhaps with some (what look like) minor modifications I could make some of them pop-out-able too!

[Yamaeda]

If you have subpanels in each tab you can Hide tabs through the page references and pop out VI's as separate windows. You should be able to create a r-click menu for this (i've never done that part) or just have a menu option of "pop out active tab"

/Y