Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

Graphs in drawings

Status
Not open for further replies.

Lazar

New member
Can anyone out there tell me how to add a graph (e.g. a suppliers Torque Vs. Speed specs) to a Pro/E drawing?



I am using Wildfire, and I played around with inserting an Excel chart into the drawing, but there are a bunch of problems:



1. Pro/E crashes

2. Can't scale the Excel chart properly so that the information is legible/comprehensible

3. Pro/E crashes

4. When I plot the drawing, the graph disappears

5. Sometimes when editing the Excel chart within Pro/E, I cannot exit out of the excel app and back to Pro when I am finished with the chart

6. Pro/E crashes



I am getting very frustrated with Pro/E & Excel right now. I know that this can't be the first time anyone has required a graph on their drawing, but it is the first time that I ever had to do it. So if anyone knows of the old method (i.e. Pre-WF/Excel) I would really appreciate the answer.



Thanks in advance



Lazar
 
Have you tried to save your graph as a jpeg or a tiff and insert that in. thats the only way i can think of how to do that.
 
If you have enough information to create the table in Excel, have you tried creating a Graph feature in Pro/ENGINEER (Insert > Model Datum > Graph)? Graph features have been around for years and are very stable. You can display the Graph feature on your drawings (Insert > Graph) and it will come out correctly on a printer or ploter.



OLE embedded objects can only be printed through the Windows Print Manager. Plotters don't know what to do with them.
 
Yeah, I did try the graph feature, but unfortunately, my graph required more than one plot, which would not work in the graph feature (only 1 loop allowed when sketching).



I also tried the inserting a tiff/jpeg, but still did not get the results I had hoped.



What I ended up doing was inserting the Excel chart onto a blank drawing. Scaled it to the desired size, exported a DXF, and then imported the DXF into my drawing. This worked well in terms of presentation and plotting, but it did require some trial & error work to achieve an understandable presentation. Once the DXF was imported, I had to do a bit of cleanup on the resulting graph.



I was satisfied with the work around that I came up with. Now that I know how to get the graph into a drawing, it shouldn't take me as long if I need to do again in the future. However, there has to be an easier way to do this.



I would be curious to know how this was accomplished in Pre-18 versions of Pro/E.
 
OLE, as far as I know, was not available prior to Pro E 2001. And I remember a few software performance issues, especially in the earlier build codes (e.g., Pro E locking up while editting the Excel object).
 
What the deuce? DRAW IT!?!



That is six different kinds of crazy. I will stick with my DXF work-around thank you very much.



Thanks to all that replied.



Lazar
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top