Bird's-eye viewers were a fixture in CAD programming long before there was ever an application to video games. I think I was using AutoCAD REL10 when I first encountered it. That would be 13 or 14 years ago. I am not sure what other graphical computing would have needed a BE viewer before that. I never got to use other high end CAD back then - perhaps CATIA had a similar function although they were not know for ease of use.
FWIW (I've not fired up 7.1 yet) the abilty to center the main window by a double click in the bird is the best use for a bird. Although in AutoCAD you could drag out a window in the bird and the main view would zoom to that extent. Since the BD and FP don't zoom in LV there is no application for that function. Mike -----Original Message----- From: Greg McKaskle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 10:45 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Bird's Eye View 1.5.0 Available > It is part of LabVIEW 7.1, one of the few nice features you get with > that versions. Although it can be sometimes discouraging to spend all > the time to develop something like this, to just see NI to crank out > the same, in a better or worse way, in the next version, it is > definitely a very effective way to get new features into LabVIEW. Some > sort of uber-suggestion reporting. Proofing to them it can be done, > triggers some of their developers very effectively ;-) > > I had the same with my LLB viewer utility to show the contents of > LabVIEW libraries in Windows Explorer ;-) > Inspiration comes in many forms, and in the case of the birds eye or Navigation Window, it is basically the map view in many video games. It was developed during LV7 development, but wasn't ready for primetime. It took a few additional notifications before it was really ready to go, so the first anyone saw of it was the beta for 7.1, which was I believe a few weeks after the OpenG version was posted. So if it wins a Nobel or similar, I guess it will be a shared honor. Anyway, it is interesting how many times this sort of thing seems to happen. Like I said, enjoy. Greg McKaskle
