Building a LabVIEW Toolbox

In some ways, reusable LabVIEW code is sort of like motherhood and apple pie. Everybody agrees with the ideal, but sometimes the reality doesn’t quite measure up to the hype. While nobody will openly talk down code reusability, it often times ends up as one of those things we’ll get to, “one day”. No one questions that reusable code simplifies work and improves the quality of finished applications, but how do you create this toolbox in the first place? Well, dear readers, is what we are going to deal with this time: Where to look to get the VIs for the toolbox, and where to put them so they are available.

Every Toolbox Needs a Home

So let’s start with where we are going to store our reusable VIs, and the first thing to observe is that there are a couple basic requirements that any potential location has to be able to meet. To begin with, it should be a set location that doesn’t need to change from one project to the next. This is why I recommend the conventions that I presented a couple of weeks ago: Setting up your workspace as I suggested creates a directory structure that doesn’t need to change from one project to the next. Likewise, each functional area of your toolbox should, have its own subdirectory that contains a LabVIEW library with the same name as the directory where it is located. All VIs associated with a given functional area should be in that area’s directory and linked to its library. This organization creates a unique namespace that can help clarify what a given VI does and reduce the likelihood of naming conflicts.

Directory-Structure

The second requirement for a reuse code storage location is that it has to be easy to find during development. While having the toolbox located just a couple clicks off the root of a hard drive is a step in the right direction, there’s a lot more we can do. For example, on the function menu that you get when you right-click in free space on the block diagram, there is a palette selection called User Library and in theory it is the place where your toolbox would go. The only problem is that by default it points to the user.lib subdirectory in the LabVIEW installation directory. This directory association is a problem because with each release, Windows is getting more restrictive about being able to modify the contents of program installation directories. Luckily, that default association can be changed that the new association will automatically update to show new files that you add to the toolbox.

To proceed, with just LabVIEW open go to the Advanced submenu on the Tools menu, and select the Edit Palette Set… option. In the Functions palette window, you should see User Libraries icon. Right click on it and you will see an item with a check mark next to it called Synchronize With Directory — click on it once to deselect it and then select it a second time to reselect it. When you reselect it, LabVIEW will open a dialog box asking you to select the directory that you want to associate with the icon. Navigate to the directory where you are going to be creating your toolbox (by convention, C:/Workspace/Toolbox) and click the Select Folder Button. At this point, the icon will be linked to your new toolbox directory, plus as you add items to your toolbox, they will automatically show-up in the menu the next time you restart LabVIEW.

While we are here, there is one other palette modification you might want to make, and that is to add a copy of the User Libraries menu to the Programming palette. Because that palette is often open by default, it makes it handy to have the link to your toolbox there as well. To add it, click on the Programming icon to open the palette, and then right-click in any open space. From the resulting menu, go to the Insert submenu and select Subpalette… . The first thing you will see is the Insert Subpalette dialog box. From the available options, select Link to a directory and click the OK button. In the resulting dialog box, navigate to the directory where LabVIEW is installed, and then open the user.lib subdirectory. Finally, click the Select Folder Button.

To save your work and return to the LabVIEW development environment, click the Save Changes button in the Edit Controls and Functions Palette Set window.

Where to get the VIs

Now that we have a place for the VIs to go, let’s get some code to put there. The first place to look is with your existing code — in our case, the test bed application. However, don’t start first thing looking for large involved chunks of code to reuse. That level of reuse is important, and it will come, but let’s get our feet wet looking for small simple pieces. Remember that small things you use a lot provide greater time savings than large complex VIs that you reuse once or twice. So what do you look for to make reusable routines?

Here’s a few things to consider:

  1. Things you do a lot
    A good case in point here is the delay that follows the launching logic in testbed.vi. I have a routine in my toolbox that wraps a conditional structure around a wait, and it is probably one of the most commonly used routines in my toolbox. It’s very simple, but it seems that I am constantly running into situations where I need either the error clusters to create a data dependency that defines exactly when the delay runs; or the error case to allow me to bypass long errors.However, you will likely want to modify this snippet before reusing it — otherwise all you will have is a reusable 2 second delay. Before turning the code into subVI, bring the constant outside the case structure so the delay time becomes a parameter that is passed into the routine. Carrying this idea a step further, turning this code into a subVI can also be an opportunity to recreate the API to better-fit your needs. For instance you may want to be able to wait until a particular clock time, or you may want to be able to specify the delay is something other than milliseconds. In a future post we’ll revisit this subVI talking about using LabVIEW units to simplify code.
    For another example of how I used the repackaging for reuse to tweak the API to make it more to my liking, check-out the changes I made to the logic for closing the launcher front panel. As it was, it would always close the windows regardless of what you were doing, or wanting to do. However, there are times during development when it would be better to leave it open. To address this need, I modified the code so it has an additional input that allows you to specify when you want it to close the front panel. The enumeration has two values: Always and Not in Development.
  2. Low-level functions that should have error clusters, but don’t
    Repackaging the Wait (ms) function is a good example of this point too, but I also have a whole family of routines that put wrappers around things like the built-in one- and two-button dialog box functions. Remember, just because a given function might not be able to generate an error, it doesn’t mean that the routine might not reasonably need to be able to respond to an error.If an earlier stage of a process has failed, do you really want to keep prompting the user to do things? To do so confuses the problem by hiding (from the user’s perspective) where the error occurred. If you don’t think the user’s perceptions matter, remember that a confused user can’t give you good feedback, and efficient troubleshooting and debugging is dependent upon good feedback.
  3. Functions that, while not difficult, took you a while to figure out
    Often times you will run into a situation where it takes you a while to figure out how to do something rather simple, like using .NET calls to perform a network ping more efficiently than using the system executive function. Such code is perfect to turn into reusable code. Just remember to give a little thought to what should be input parameters to make the code flexible.
  4. Functions that implement an agreed-upon convention
    I spend a lot of time talking about conventions and the efficiency they can bring to a development process. An easy way of implementing some conventions is to embody them in code. For example, you can create a VI that builds the standardized directory structure you use, or one that builds paths to the application INI file based on the conventions that your organization uses.
    Note that this point can also serve as your avenue for reuse of larger sections of code. For example, you may to want collect and report errors is a certain way, or store test results in a particular format or in a particular location. Developing a standalone process that implements these techniques can significantly simplify the work needed to standardize on the techniques across all your projects.

Obviously, there are a lot of other places to look for reusable code, but this will get you started. Just don’t be surprised when we come back to this in the future.

A testbed and a toolbox

So where does all this work leave us? Going through what we have built so far, I have implemented a toolbox that currently has two VIs in it, and then used those VIs in the testbed. By the way, while I was there, it occurred to me that many of the projects I will be creating will use the same basic structures for stopping the application and reporting errors, so I also moved the UDEs associated with those operations to a section in the toolbox called Standard UDEs. You can find the modified testbed code in our subversion repository at:

http://svn.notatamelion.com/blogProject/testbed application/Tags/Release 3

while the toolbox is at:

http://svn.notatamelion.com/blogProject/toolbox/Tags/Release 1

Be assured that going forward we will be adding more code to our toolbox, but for now this will do. In terms of using the toolbox, you’ll note also that I did not include the reuse libraries in the project. To do so can create its own kind of cross linking problems, and is unnecessary. All you need to do is simply use the VI’s you need and let LabVIEW maintain the libraries as included in the Dependencies section of the project.

Oh yes, one more thing for you to think about: If I am going to be using the same error collection technique in the future, why didn’t I make the Exception Handler.vi a part of the reuse library? And why is it named “Exception Handler” anyway, it’s just for errors, right?

Until next time…

Mike…

PS: Happy Birthday to me… Yes, it is official: I am older than dirt.

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