Selecting a Connector Pane Pattern

Complete the following steps to select a connector pane pattern for a VI.

1. Right-click the icon in the upper right corner of the front panel window and select Show Connector from the shortcut menu to display the connector pane. The connector pane replaces the icon.
   
   The default connector pane pattern is 4 × 2 × 2 × 4. If you anticipate changes to the VI that might require a new input or output, keep the default connector pane pattern to leave extra terminals unassigned.
2. To select a different connector pane pattern for the VI, right-click the connector pane and select Patterns from the shortcut menu.

Note  Select a connector pane pattern with more terminals than necessary; including extra terminals in the VI allows you to add additional connectors to the VI and makes relinking to the subVI in calling VIs unnecessary.

3. After you select a connector pane pattern, you can customize it to suit the VI by adding, removing, or rotating the terminals.
   • To add a terminal to the pattern, place the cursor where you want to add the terminal, right-click, and select Add Terminal from the shortcut menu.

Note  Assigning more than 16 terminals to a VI can reduce readability and usability.

• To remove an existing terminal from the pattern, right-click the terminal and select Remove Terminal from the shortcut menu.
• To change the spatial arrangement of the connector pane patterns, right-click the connector pane and select Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, or Rotate 90 Degrees from the shortcut menu.

4. Assign a front panel control or indicator to each of the connector pane terminals.
5. If you placed the VI as a subVI on another block diagram, you must relink the subVI to the VI whose connector pane you changed by right-clicking the subVI and selecting Relink To SubVI from the shortcut menu. Otherwise, the VI containing the subVI is broken and will not run.

The connector pane has, at most, 28 terminals. If a front panel contains more than 28 controls and indicators that you want to use programmatically, group some of them into a cluster and assign the cluster to a terminal on the connector pane.