I've been wishing for a freehand sketchpad for the diagram view. Maybe also have the basic "draw tools" - text, squares, fills, lines, etc.
I'd love to be able to just look at the back panel, and circle a big chunk of code and then maybe have some explainitory text next to it.
It would have to be a layers thing, so you could click a button to hide or show.

yeah, that's what subvi's are for but still...

I dont get it!? What is the back panel? Do you mean freehand block diagram which create messy wires?
Can you be more specific or have picture diagram to explain your idea.
Thanks

Some people use a one-frame Stacked Sequence Structure to wrap a piece of code and put some text. Not my favorite, but that could do the trick.
I'm not sure a free-hand sketchpad would increase readability of the block diagrams. But the draw tools might be useful I agree, although it's that sort of thing that might be nice to have, but how many times will you really need something like this? For the moment, decorations can be dropped on the front panel and copied to the diagram.

They can actually be dropped directly on the BD.

/J

Well, a simplified version of the front panel decoration palette...

No, you can actually select a decoration from the front panel palette and drop it directly onto the block diagram.

In additional to decoration, discussed above I using following technique for adding some freehand drawings on the block diagram:

I creating such notices pretty rarely (usually text labels enough), but they helpful in some complicated situations...

You needed just two tools:
ZoomIt from Sysinternals: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb897434.aspx
SnagIt capture software: http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
First on is free and second - not (but pretty good). Other screen capture software also may be used, sure.

When I need to add hand-based drawing to BD, I do following:
- press Ctrl+2
- draw what I wanted
- press Ctrl+Shift+C (Hot keys can be changed of course)
- select region where drawing located (after selection drawing disappeared automatically)
- select BD and press Ctrl+V
Now drawing inserted as bitmap into BD.
Andrey.

You can do that with several FP items - eg: drop a numeric control from the FP palette onto the BD and you'll get a constant of that type. You can also drag and drop items between the FP and BD - eg: complex cluster on the FP become same datatype on the BD (and vice versa).

You're right, but normally my block diagram takes the whole screen... and Ctrl-E doesn't work when you have something selected.

Buy another screen for you FP

In my dreams!!!

The same can be done with MS Paint, by creating the bitmap there and copy/pasting it to LV.

Why you need so many different software and shortcuts to create freehand sketches on BD while you can
paste anything on the BD through the built-in Windows clipboard. Copy anything you want to the clipboard
then Ctrl+V to paste in anywhere you like, any size you want on the BD.

If you follow some simple Design techniques and structures , i believe you will rarely use this feature unless you

really have to. One thing I can think of is the State transition diagram, which will be kind of useful info on the BD

for the other programmers to have a general idea of the designed state machine within the code.