LabVIEW
tool palette wont stay active
LabVIEW user groep 
Sorry my ignorance, but which one is the "grab tool"??
I never show any palettes. To get the tools palette, just do a "shift+right-click" and you get it right where you need it and not in the opposite corner of the screen. 🙂
t06afre wrote:
Or better go to tools>option>environment and deselect the option look automatic tool selection option. Then you can use the tab key to select tool you want. It is so much faster. This is the perfect example that proves NI gives a dam in experienced programmers. They favorites the moron who is new to labview and wants to have a ugly and useless daq software up and running in 30 minutes
I'm sorry, but I really, really like the automatic tool selection (esp. on the BD).
It is much better than in the 6.x days and much faster, I only use the 'tab' key once or twice a day. RSI there you go.
Ton
I know how to enable it, and set the automatic tool selection already. I like to have the toolbox active all the time, currently the toolbox goes away on it's own and I have to re-enable it to view on the desktop. LV 8.5 would leave it active once it was enabled.
t06afre wrote:
Or better go to tools>option>environment and deselect the option look automatic tool selection option. Then you can use the tab key to select tool you want. It is so much faster. This is the perfect example that proves NI gives a dam in experienced programmers. They favorites the moron who is new to labview and wants to have a ugly and useless daq software up and running in 30 minutes
Dam? Hoover Dam? 🙂
Sorry, but we understood your reply very well. First of all, somebody who is new to labview is not a moron and does not necessarily produce useless and ugly software. No need for generalized name calling. Everybody started out as a new LabVIEW programmer at one point, and learning it is a rewarding experience, especially since beginner code is usually functional. 🙂
Anyway, your suggestion of disabling automatic tool selection is misguided in this case (and possibly in any case!), because the "scroll window" tool (Yes, that't the actual name for the "grab hand" ) is NOT available with tabbing. Tabbing only rotates through the 4 most often used tools (space bar toggles between the two most used tools).
Having the tools palette visible or not (as in the original question) actually has nothing to do with the discussion of automatic tools selection.
Coming from a guy that started out way before the introduction of automatic tool selection, I have done the "two-handed" LabVIEW coding for many years (right hand on the mouse, left thumb on the spacebar, left ring finger on the tab (are we talking about the vulcan death grip here?) :D). While the first iteration of automatic tool selection was a bit rocky, it has evolved into an incredibly useful feature and I have not disabled it in years. Nowadays, most of my programming is "one handed". LabVIEW can read my mind in 98% of the cases and automatically selects the right tool for the job in a nanosecond. Why anyone would suggest to disable this useful feature is difficult to understand.
Whenever I need one of the more exotic tools a "shift+right-click" brings up the tools palette right at the mouse position and I can directly select the tool I want, without any need for counting tab clicks. 😉
Using automatic tools needs about five minutes to learn, because there are a few quirks that might not be intuitive (and might annoy people with a rigid and stubborn mind). For example to branch from a wire, you need to place the mouse a few pixels away from the wire to get the wire spool. (If you aim directly at the wire yo'll get the select tool). These thing quickly become second nature and you would learn very quickly how the get the desired tool by hovering in the right zone for the desired action. That's what makes an "experienced programmer" and automatic tool selection is an excellent example how NI cares about them.
There is no need for misguided elitism such as "real programmers don't use automatic tool selection" or "real programmers use text based code".
In any case, the "scroll window" tool has become less important for many reasons. First of all, guidelines suggest that the diagram should fit on the screen. Second, we also have the navigation window that lets us pan to any desired place on the diagram with much better precision than the "grab hand" ever could. 😄
Since I have been doing this for so many years. Some of my labview skills have been transferred to my cerebellum. So I do things as a reflex. But anyway, the automatic tool selection option has never brought my any thing else than frustration. For me it does not work. It only gives me an urge to throw the computer out of the window. Much like the graph cursor indicator introduced in labview 8
