Selecting a Connector Pane Pattern

To use a VI as a subVI, you need to build a connector pane. Complete the following steps to select a connector pane pattern for a VI.

1. The default connector pane pattern is 4 × 2 × 2 × 4. To select a different pattern, 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.

2. 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.
   • 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.
3. Assign a front panel control or indicator to each of the connector pane terminals.
4. 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.

National Instruments recommends you avoid using more than 16 terminals. A connector pane with more than 16 terminals can be difficult to wire. If you need to pass more data, use clusters.