View a block diagram #

Render a VI's block diagram to a faithful, interactive diagram and open it in a browser — without opening LabVIEW.

Prerequisites #

lvkit installed (pip install lvkit).
A .vi file. If it calls SubVIs that live outside its own directory, know where — you'll pass --search-path.

Render the diagram #

lvkit render "path/to/Some VI.vi" --format html -o outputs/some-vi.html

--format html wraps the block diagram in an interactive viewer page (zoom/pan and a theme toggle — see Read the diagram below); the default --format svg writes just the diagram itself, no toolbar. -o writes the file at that path. Without -o, render only warms its internal build cache and prints where — it does not write an output file you can open — so pass -o whenever you want a diagram to open, keep, or attach to a review.

If the VI calls SubVIs that live outside its own directory, add --search-path:

lvkit render "path/to/Some VI.vi" --format html \
  --search-path path/to/libraries \
  -o outputs/some-vi.html

lvkit always searches the VI's own directory and its project root (the nearest enclosing .lvkit/) automatically — --search-path is only for dependencies elsewhere on disk. See SubVI & vi.lib resolution for the full set of resolution flags (--vilib, --userlib, --no-auto-vilib, ...), all accepted by render too.

Open it #

open outputs/some-vi.html    # macOS
xdg-open outputs/some-vi.html  # Linux
start outputs\some-vi.html   # Windows

The file is a single self-contained HTML page — no server, no external JS/CSS — so it opens the same way locally, attached to a code review, or hosted as a static CI artifact.

Read the diagram #

render draws the same wiring and structure layout LabVIEW's own editor would show, colors wires by data type, and gives every SubVI its real icon (pulled from the VI file, not redrawn) — a primitive lvkit doesn't recognize still draws, as a labeled box instead of a glyph, so nothing silently disappears from the diagram.

Zoom / pan — +/- buttons or keys, ⛶ (or f) to fit the whole diagram back into view, Ctrl/Cmd+scroll to zoom under the cursor, click-drag to pan.
Theme toggle — the small ◐ button in the toolbar cycles the diagram's own color theme auto → light → dark → auto, independent of your browser or editor's theme.
Case/sequence structures — click a structure's selector (◄ / ► / dropdown) to switch which frame is visible.
Hover a node for a help panel with its terminal names and types.
Recognized primitives and vi.lib VIs deep-link to their NI documentation page; an unrecognized one draws as a plain labeled box with no doc link.

An unresolved SubVI doesn't fail the render — it draws as a box with its name wrapped inside instead of a real icon, and the rest of the diagram, including any SubVI that did resolve, still renders normally.

Render a whole directory #

Pointing render at a directory instead of a single .vi warms every VI under it into the cache in one pass (skipping any already-fresh slot); add -o DIR to also export a mirrored .svg/.html tree:

lvkit render path/to/library/ --format html -o outputs/library-diagrams/