AutoCAD OLE Plotting Problems

[zach_hill]

To anybody who's up for a challenge...

I am trying to insert an Excel spreadsheet created by other staff members in the office(constantly gets updated) into my AutoCAD 2008 plot file. I need to display the header of the table and then only certain rows of the table while excluding others.

The way I was trying to achieve this was by inserting the linked excel table into model space and then create a viewport for each section of the table I wanted to see in the model space of the file. This displays perfectly and at fist seemed to be the ideal solution.

However when it came to plotting or printing the document things went slightly wrong. Each viewport printed the top left corner of the OLE object rather than the viewport contents. This meant I had 6 viewports showing the header of the table, slightly useless to me... We tested the drawing on several printers / plotters using different drivers and even creating pdf's with no success.

If anyone has any idea on what causes this and even better, how to fix the problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

[H-Angus]

One thing you could try is to have the table in a single viewport and use masks/wipeouts to hide the columns/rows you don't require.

[irneb]

Not sure if this would work, but in Options --> Plot and Publish, try setting "Use OLE application when plotting OLE objects" on / off to see if this removes your problem.

Otherwise you can paste as link, but using AutoCAD entities. Thus creating a live AutoCAD Table from portions of the spreadsheet. This would probably look different from the spreadsheet though.

[ccowgill]

To anybody who's up for a challenge...

I am trying to insert an Excel spreadsheet created by other staff members in the office(constantly gets updated) into my AutoCAD 2008 plot file. I need to display the header of the table and then only certain rows of the table while excluding others.

The way I was trying to achieve this was by inserting the linked excel table into model space and then create a viewport for each section of the table I wanted to see in the model space of the file. This displays perfectly and at fist seemed to be the ideal solution.

However when it came to plotting or printing the document things went slightly wrong. Each viewport printed the top left corner of the OLE object rather than the viewport contents. This meant I had 6 viewports showing the header of the table, slightly useless to me... We tested the drawing on several printers / plotters using different drivers and even creating pdf's with no success.

If anyone has any idea on what causes this and even better, how to fix the problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

I would insert it as an AutoCAD object using the data link so it automatically updates, and then either use viewports to accomplish what your goal is, or look into if you hide a row in excel, does it still show up in AutoCAD or does it get hidden.