Hello Robert,
I think what you are asking is very possible in both LabWindows/CVI and LabVIEW. Since they are very similar the process to create this program should be similar in both environments so you can use whichever you are more comfortable with. Both programs should have everything you need for this task, so no outside tools should be needed. Since you posted in the CVI forms I will address it from this angle.
I presume the schematics you speak of will be based on some image files, which you can load these images onto a canvas in CVI. On that canvas you could use the mouse to highlight areas, in various basic shapes, and then have a popup appear which would allow you to associate a name to this shape. This would allow you to draw shapes on the canvas around objects to highlight them. You could then store this data in a dynamic array to hold all objects drawn in this session. You then want another array to hold the objects currently drawn on the canvas so you can have multiple drawn objects. Once an object is stored, you can use a textbox to type in the names an search the storage array to find the corresponding shape and re-draw it on the canvas. Therefore managing the objects would only require simple array functions. Also you may want to have the ability to write this data (the arrays) to disk so you can reload this data later. There is an example that ships with CVI, search for 'canvas' in Example Finder, that should help illustrate the basic use of the canvas control.
The above process should give you something similar to what you described, but you may have some specific requirements that might require changes to this outline. If you post those details we might be able to make more suggestions. I hope this will give you a good starting point.
John B.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
