resrchengee wrote:
Why do I need references? I need them because I need to be able to change control values and indicators from within a sub vi. If there is another way to do that without having the references please explain?


I certainly don't know the final purpose of your VI and what else will be there. There are always many different ways to do things and my comment simply meant that there might be other options.
To simply change a value of a control does NOT even need a subVI, especially since you seems to be so overly concerned about memory use and performance.
Maybe you can explain to all of us what you are really trying to do and why you think references are the best way. I have written thousands of programs and never updated controls that way, and never had the need to do so.
(And looping through control references by name as suggested by Stradis seems to just complicate things even more. I would always strive for the simplest solution! )