What Is This?

[James_McN]

I have inherited a project where the customer is looking for a UI update to an existing application.

For the first time in a long time, I have found something that I have no idea what it is!

It appears to be a decoration but somehow linked to a set of controls such that they are grouped and resize as a group. Attached are some images of front panel and diagram.

Features:

• When I click anywhere in the box all controls are selected as a group.
• Scales as a group (like a pane)
• Individual terminals are drop and can replace individual controls.
• Properties dialog just calls it an "Object" and not any special properties.

Any ideas? I want to modify but actually it is generally useful to know!

[MikeeB · Accepted solution]

Is it a set of objects grouped?  Mike

[Art.Dee]

I agree with MikeeB, try selecting the "object", and ungrouping it.

[Prash_32]

It is a Decoration and set of controls/Indicators placed on it and all are grouped together. So if you resize the decoration, all the grouped elements are also resizing along with it.

[James_McN]

Thanks guys, all correct!

I don't know why, I've never played with grouping much.

[JoeySpinella]

Do any of you use grouping much?

This was a feature that I (embarrassingly) didn't realize existed until recently. Now that you know about it, do you think you will use it more James?

[MikeeB]

I use it with a group of controls that I want aligned, eg 3 vertically centred. make a group of them and then I can horizontally pack multiple groups like that. Once you get the hang of it, it does make life simpler. The closest analogy I have is once you figure out layers in graphics.  Mike

[Staab_Engineering]

Yeah, I use it temporarily to align things and copy/paste groups, but I disable it when building for release because I feel like it creates opportunities for weird resizing and movement at runtime.

[ben64]

Have a look at "align multiple cluster elements in rows/colum​ns" from nathand (post 71 of the Micro-Nuggets!!! thread of the LabVIEW discussion forum). It gives a nice example of the use of grouping controls.

Ben64

[Alex-n-ra]

Hi Joey! I use Grouping all the time for UI design. I'll put two indicators together (a Numeric result and a Boolean indicating whether the value passes or fails), and I'll define a spatial relationship for them (align vertical centers and space out nicely), then group those, duplicate them, and define a new relationship between the groups (bottoms aligned, groups distributed evenly).