Tip Jar #2 - Another Confession - The OpenG Libraries

In keeping with the theme from last week, I thought I'd add another confession to the pile. This time, I'm referring to using the OpenG Library. Thanks to generous contributions of the LabView community, a very useful library of VIs has been developed, tested, and expanded over quite a few years.

How many times have you checked to see if an array is empty, checked whether a file exists, or had an error while trying to save into a non-existent directory? Like me, you've probably written a handful of chunks of code over and over, repeating the same task. Your first tour around the OpenG toolkit will probably have you slapping your forehead saying, "Why didn't I ever write a SubVI for that?"

Some of my favorites are:
Draw Image from File: Loads a BMP, JPG, or PNG into a picture control
Write INI Cluster: Dumps all the data from clusters into an INI file format
Tick Count (with Error): Simply adds error in and out clusters to the tick count VI
ZIP Compress and Extract: Sure showed up in recent versions of LabVIEW, but this was a godsend a few years ago.

Recently, installation was simplified by Jim Kring and his team at JKISoft with the VIPM (VI Package Manager). To install the OpenG Toolkit, you first install the VIPM and then selectively install the toolkits you want.

The toolkits are well-documented, and some are equipped with examples to be installed into the "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW X.X\examples\OpenG" directory.

Please watch the video below for a quick tour and some discussion of my favorite OpenG VIs.

As always, please feel free to add your comments below, including your favorites.

Ben Zimmer
-- LV Mastery Team

Testimonials