Use the navigation controls located on the System and Modern palettes to navigate through multiple front panels in an application. Navigation controls include the Previous Button, Next Button, and Jump Button controls.

Previous Button and Next Button Navigation Controls

The Previous Button and Next Button controls navigate through and display the front panels of VIs in a project library. The controls navigate through the VIs in a project library based on the order the VIs appear in the project library. If you want to change the order of the VIs, you must change the order in the project library.

Note You must reference a VI in a LabVIEW project library.lvlib to use the Previous Button and Next Button controls. When you add a Previous Button or Next Button control to the front panel of a VI that is not referenced by a LabVIEW project library file, the control displays an error glyph.

When a user selects the Next Button control for the last VI in a project library, the Next Button control displays the front panel for the first VI listed in the project library. You only can access VIs in the same project library with these controls.

Tip Select File»New to display the New dialog box, and select Other Files»Multi-panel Application to display a template that uses the Previous Button and Next Button controls.

You can set the string text on the Previous Button and Next Button programmatically by using the Button Text property. Right-click a navigation control from the front panel, select Create»Property Node, and select the Button Text property from the shortcut menu. LabVIEW creates the Property Node on the block diagram. The Property Node links implicitly to the navigation control.

Jump Button Navigation Control

You can use the Jump Button control to navigate to a specific VI. When you add a Jump Button control to the front panel, the Configure Jump Button dialog box appears. Use this dialog box to select the target VI and the text to display on the button. You can specify any VI on disk as the target VI, even if the VI is not referenced by a project library. You may want to use a Jump Button control if you have a VI that functions as the main panel in an application or references multiple project libraries.

Note Use the Button Text property and Target VI property to set the string text and target VI, respectively, on the Jump Button programmatically.