Step settings in TS4

[Bojer]

Hi All.

In TS4 is there this new window "Step settings", where you directly can edit for instance the expression in a statement, is there any way that we can "program" this window, so when you have a custom step type, then you don't have to press ctrl-e to open a new window or press the button in this "step settings"... but directly configure the step....

Any ideas... or is it for NI only...

/Bojer

[Scott_Richardson]

Bojer -
In the TestStand 4.0 Sequence Editor, the Step Settings tabs that display step type specific information is only available to NI step types. We have just started to here this request from a few other customers. We would like to consider making this more open in the future, but making this interface open to customers is challenging, so we do not have any specific plans to do this yet. Even if we expose this interface, step type developers may still need to display the old style to support editing steps in custom sequence editors.

Sincerely,

[John242424]

I have a question along these lines but a little different. What I am trying to do is utilize a 'goto' step type and more specifically the 'Destination Step' drop down when handling errors. i.e. when an error occurs, I want to display a dialog that has the destination step drop down so the user can select where in the sequence he or she would like to goto.

Is this possible? I’ve dug a little and have yet to locate a dll or callback that would expose the destination step drop down to me.

[Changi]

Hi Scott,

I would like to know if configurable step settings tabs have been implemented for TS4.2.1 as has been asked by Bojer.

Regards

Aditya

[Mathieu.Daigle]

I understand it probably is a quite challenging feature to implement. However, I see big gains for people like us using custom step types a lot. TS4 improvement of avoiding popups made sequence file development really better, but I am looking forward to have the same possibility with custom step types.

Any inside news on this, or we should just stop dreaming about it?

Mathieu Daigle

Certified TestStand Architect

Averna

[Changi]

Hi Mathieu,

This is exactly the potential I see in it too. But, as even the Best Practices document for Custom Step Type development from the NI TestStand Architecture series says, 

"Currently, you cannot embed the editing interface for custom step types into the Step Settings pane."

I did some snooping around to figure out why.. 

The key lies in the NIStepTypeControls.dll file in the installation 'Bin' folder for which we do not have the source code..

Although I managed to add tabs to existing steps, (and they did not work properly) and change the display strings, it was really a dead end from a custom step type development point of view.

Regards,

Aditya Changavalli

NI TestStand 4.2.1