In the latest edition of WUELUG, which was dedicated to “Working Efficiently in the LabVIEW IDE”, we spent four hours learning about the ins and outs of our favourite tool. From shortcuts to quick drops to menus to bookmarks, we heard it all, some of it directly from the horses’ mouths. Was it worth it, you ask? You betcha!
This edition of our LabVIEW Users’ Group had the peculiar honour of being the anniversary of our first online meeting. It pains us of course to not be able to meet up with all our #LabVIEWFriends, however, we have to say, that we have become extremely adept at organising virtual meetings. This lack of modesty is well deserved, each meetup is better than the last.
Scoring the Presenters
On this occasion, we were able to score many great minds of the LabVIEW community. The story of how we scored them is a testament to the LabVIEW community: Stefan Lemmens had offered to give his presentation on shortcuts for our user group. At around 10 pm on Good Friday(!!), after idly exchanging some text messages with Stefan, the theme of how to work more efficiently in LabVIEW was born. Joerg immediately reached out to Tom, Darren and Chris, and it took only 10 (ten!) minutes on a Friday night (well, afternoon in Texas) for all of them to say “yes, of course”. Wow – what a community! Thank you!
Connecting from all around the world, the cream of the cream then went on to teach us all the best tricks and tips to achieve maximum efficiency navigating the LabVIEW IDE. Departing from the previous tradition, every single participant held their presentation in English.
Working Efficiently in the LabVIEW IDE
Shortcuts in LabVIEW (Stefan Lemmens)
Even with our team’s extensive practice and experience with LabVIEW, this WUELUG held many useful surprises. Shortcuts are a fabulous way to speed up development, once you learn about them it’s simply just a matter of muscle memory. Some freshly learned shortcuts for our team were: the Window Manager (ctrl-shift-w), the Class Browser (ctrl-shift-b), Label Cleanup (ctrl-t), Align & Compress (ctrl-shift-a), Text Icon from VI Name (ctrl-k). Stefan Lemmens is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to shortcuts.
Additionally, we had the chance to learn more about software from the community designed to benefit everyone. For example, two wonderful games to learn better Quick Drop skills. Be sure to check them out! (We know you are gaming during home office anyway 😉) Here’s Darren’s “Falling Shortcuts” game. And here’s John Medland’s “Quick Droppin” game. They’re not just fun, but useful too. What more could you want?
Quick Drop Plugins (Tom Mcquillan)
Tom McQuillan gave a super introduction to Quick Drop, if you want to learn about creating custom Quick Drops and extending the IDE, this is the presentation to watch. In addition, he mentioned the “Pane Relief” tool from Hope Harrison, which is sure to come in handy if you have ever toiled over front panel panes/pains.
Right Click Menus (Darren Nattinger)
And of course, as always, hearing first-hand stories from our friends and colleagues was amazing. Darren’s presentation on Right Click Menus in LabVIEW was as informative and entertaining as always, we heard a few tales from the development of LabVIEW itself, allowing us to see the ghost in the machine.
Bookmarks and Tools (Chris Roebuck)
Before this, we have underestimated the power of bookmarks. But not any more! Chris’s talk about his freely available bookmark tool was fascinating. If you ever wanted some more order in your bookmarks, this is the solution for you. We will also be implementing it into our own workflows.
Saving Our Knowledge For Posterity
Everything we did was recorded! So if you missed out for any reason, you’re in luck!
- Shortcuts in LabVIEW (Stefan Lemmens)
- Right Click Menus in LabVIEW (Darren Nattinger)
- WUELUG12: Quick Drop Stuff (Tom McQuillan)
- Bookmarks and Tools (Chris Roebuck)
Why did we love WUELUG12?
WUELUG12 had by far the most participants. Close to 70 people attended from all over, thereby almost tripling our usual number. To our delight, many new people showed up, especially from the German speaking area. The interactivity was even better than usual, one always forgets that the audience is also an essential part of any presentation.
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