Using Excel as a Drawing Table Editor

Is it possible to use Excel as a Drawing Table Editor, i.e. when no model is
present? ProTable is useless.

 

: Is it possible to use Excel as a Drawing Table Editor, i.e. when no model is
: present? ProTable is useless.
:
:
Agree, Pro/TABLE is about the junkiest thing in Pro/e, but it is also being
replaced, gradually, by reworked editors or alternates, like the default Windows
editor or Excel. The latter is a selection in config.pro for editing family tables
by setting part_table_editor to excel. But, as far as drawing tables, I think
we're still SOL: Pro/REPORT for creating tables and the Table menu functions for
editing. If you just wanted to change the report parameter in a repeat region,
highlight and select a cell in the first row of a repeat region, RMB the menu,
pick properties and it will let you edit the report parameter. Or, select the Text
Style tab and change the font properties for a column.

The only other table manipulation I know of is to highlight the whole table,
select 'Table>Save table>As table file'. This file has a .tbl extension and I
don't think Excel can edit it. It mostly useful for getting a BOM you created in
one format imported into another format.

David Janes

 

Thanks, I thought so. We're not on WF yet, wondered if it had been changed
in that release.

 

David,

YES - you can do this but it will require a Pro/TOOLKIT application to
synchronize the MS-Excel contents and formatting (e.g. fonts,
alignments and merges) with the table you want in the Pro/E Drawing.

One major problem with this is that Pro/TOOLKIT is limited as to what
you can actually create in the areas of Drawing Tables. As I recall,
they can only be created in one direction (Right-Down/SE), and there
are significant limitations in many of the detailed areas that would
really make this slick. I think PTC has not done included this
functionality because it was easer to embed MS-Excel files via OLE vs
fixing Pro/TOOLKIT to actuall enable true synchonization between the
different format. (in my humble opinion)

We use the p-Shell API to work between MS-Excel and Pro/E, the latest
Pro/E mag has an artticle about how this works - and it is clean and
fast. We have had several requests to program something like what you
have asked about in the past. When we tell them about the limitations
in Pro/E relative to creating drawing tables, they typically decide to
suffer with what they got.

If you could live with some structured rules for usage, we can program
this in a relative short period of time. We can probably have
something like this done in about a week.

Cheers!

Dave