External pictures

 

External pictures are report items enabling to insert pictures from external programs into Engineering Report.

There are supported many standard picture formats:

Pictures can be inserted as link to file on the hard drive or as "Embedded".

Link to file on the hard drive: When the pictures are inserted as a link their validity status informs about changes in the source file on the hard drive. They are marked as invalid when the source file changes. Then during regeneration their content is updated and redrawn. Those pictures do not increase the size of the project but they are not displayed when the project is opened on different computer and the report item is regenerated.

Embedded pictures: Embedding of the picture means storing of its source file inside the project. Such pictures are independent on the files on hard drives. They are displayed correctly when the report item is regenerated on another computer. Those pictures increase the size of the project

External pictures can be inserted from New items panel or they can be pasted from system clipboard. Pasted pictures are automatically set as Embedded.

Properties

Name

Property name is common for all report items and is intended for users orientation. The name identifies the report item in the navigator panel.

Caption

Property caption defines the name of the caption of the report item in the report.

Caption visible

This property defines whether the report item makes separate chapter or not. In case the property is switched ON the Caption of the report item is displayed and it is also included in table of contents.

Embedded picture

This property defines whether the picture is read from the hard drive or whether it is included in the project (see beginning of this chapter).

Width / Height

This two properties defines the size of the picture. It is possible to put "0" value as width or height. In this case this size will be calculated automatically according to picture's aspect ratio.

Rotation

Enables to rotate the external raster (jpg, png, bmp, ...) pictures by 90°, 180° or 270°.

External 3D pictures (ep3, dwg, vrml) can be rotated using the button Edit external picture view point.

Position

Property Position defines placement of the picture with respect to the previous report item. See the chapter related to user defined positioning.

Horizontal alignment

It influences alignment of the picture in the report within the page width.

Editing of view point for 3D pictures

In case the external picture contains 3D data it is possible to modify the zoom and the view point using the button on the ribbon Home.

The button opens the tool :

It is also possible to switch between axonometric and perspective projection here.

External DWG pictures

It is possible to insert external DWG drawings into Engineering Report. In this case the content of DWG drawing is imported and converted to drawing objects supported by Engineering Report. The DWG drawings can be embedded into the report or they can work as external references (as other types of pictures).

Specific DWG characters %%c, %%d, %%p are converted to ∅, °, ±.

DWG colour convertor

With licence module ESA.06 (Productivity toolbox) it is possible to convert colours used in DWG to different colours and/or modify line styles and line thickness based on colours. This conversion can be done using the DWG colour converter.

In the DWG colour converter dialogue it is possible to switch the conversion ON/OFF. By default the conversion is switched ON.

The colour conversion is available for 254 basic indexed colours. For each of those colours it is possible to define:

See comparison of original and converted picture from DWG

Note that conversion of line styles does not cover all styles available in DWG drawings. Only those styles which can be selected in this dialogue are supported.