LabVIEW
labview aesthetic
Hi guy,
@somelabguy wrote:
Hey, how could i make my vi more aesthetic?
Please define "more aesthetic"…
- you don't need to show the label of the stop button when the boolean text already shows "stop"…
- the graph should have a more descriptive label
- the plot should have a more descriptive name
- the graph axes should have better labels (the x axis most probably doesn't show time data)…
- I prefer controls from System palette, and flat graphs from classic palette…
- set windows/panel size reasonable, like with even-sized borders…
The primary objective is the correct functionality, cosmetics are secondary.
Since you already posted a similar Vi here (Sorry, I cannot look at your current attachment because you did not use "save for previous"!), you should start by making the code more scalable, for example using a cluster of controls instead of herding all these cats scalars. I already showed you that!
For the cosmetics, decide on a theme (classic, silver, modern, NXG style, etc.) then use the controls from that palette for a unified look. After that resize and arrange everything logically and make sure all front panel elements have intuitive names (use captions to keep the labels simple on the diagram). Your axes scales should be labeled "X" and "Y", because they are probably not "Amplitude" and "time".
Keep it simple. Don't overload the front panel with meaningless decorations. Use colors sparingly and don't turn it into an easter egg theme.
Look at existing programs that you use daily and keep things similar so the user does not need to learn anything new.
You will find that most of us will go with simply providing as much relevant information as possible and avoid aesthetics for its own sake. You may hear the tern "User eXperience" (UX) used over "User Interface" (UI) these days, but that is more clickbait for webpages and it's just not LabVIEW's forte. You can spend a lot of time making LabVIEW pretty, but I usually just switch to the Silver Palette, some decorations and color coding around related groups of controls and call it quits.
Something like this for your example only took two minutes and IMHO, that's enough time on looks. 😜
EDIT: I should mention one thing to avoid that we see too often and that's TOO MUCH INFORMATION syndrome. Don't pack your front panel so full of tables, graphs and indicators that the user can't easily find the data they need. Save that stuff for a printed report.
@somelabguy wrote:
Hey, how could i make my vi more aesthetic? Open to ideas :). TY.
Sure, switch to System Controls. You can also r-click the scrollbars to get to Properties and set a Background picture. I like the Brushed metal. There's no system Graph, but you can drop a classic and paint it Transparent.
It'd look something like this:
@Yamaeda wrote:
@somelabguy wrote:
Hey, how could i make my vi more aesthetic? Open to ideas :). TY.
Sure, switch to System Controls. You can also r-click the scrollbars to get to Properties and set a Background picture. I like the Brushed metal. There's no system Graph, but you can drop a classic and paint it Transparent.
It'd look something like this:
The "Missing System Controls Palette" has a handful of things that are pretty nice, including the System Graph:
IMO, the black background of the default graphs looks very dated. I prefer a white background with gray line divisions.
I might add... adding splitter bars to your front panel, and setting objects in those panes to "Fit control/indicator to pane", can be helpful. LV don't always do the best job in extreme circumstances, but it does a fair job. Now you can resize things (within reason) and it still not look like crap
@DavidBoyd wrote:
One very simple change I would suggest... change those numerics to right-justified. Why that isn't the template standard after all these years, I'll never understand.
I ALWAYS want my numerics to grow in magnitude from right to left.
Same here. In addition I typically use a fixed number of decimal points padded with zeroes (Unless the expected values are unusually high or low, etc.). Padding with zeroes also makes value adjustments with the up/down arrows trivial. We just click on a position and then press up or down, typically retaining the decimal position. If we don't pad with zeroes, things jump around.
