Paste OLE into different plane

[ColinPearson]

Hey folks... I've got a drawing from a coworker with an OLE Excel table in their Top view.  I have another drawing going for the same project, but what my coworker shows as their Top view doesn't make any sense to me.  I need to take their OLE tables and paste them into my Left view, but when I do, no matter what view I am on, they paste into my Top view (so in me Left view, they appear as a line since I'm looking at their edges).

 

I have tried to recreate the OLE in my Left view to avoid this whole issue, but once I do then I can't move or copy it (and I need to do both) .

 

These are calcs that are notes to myself and live in Model Space.

 

Any ideas?  Thank y'all! 

[CyberAngel]

According to this help page, OLE objects cannot be rotated. They give a couple of suggestions. They also point out that spreadsheets are imported into a table... except yours wasn't imported, oops. Maybe you can convince your co-worker to import rather than paste directly. I guess you've already considered importing the same table, which you can place at an angle where you need it.

[ColinPearson]

thanks for the response.  I gave up on Tables years ago because I had constant trouble with them changing text size and being finicky in general.  I knew that you can't rotate OLEs, but I was hoping there was a way to paste to a plane is all.  I'm sure there is an under-the-hood reason why you can't rotate OLEs, but it makes no sense to me why you can't.  cheers! 

[BIGAL]

One of the issues solved is to make a table style that matches what you want, then can read a Excel direct and make the table. Just making a table from default can be so far from what is required. If you have a table style already set up can read that from another dwg using Lee-macs great Steal.lsp.

 

I have table -> Excel but don't have Excel -> Table. May look at it but fairly complicated as need to read a lot of row, column and cell info from Excel.

[CyberAngel]

20 hours ago, ColinPearson said:

... These are calcs that are notes to myself and live in Model Space....

 

If that's the case, the table format isn't really important, is it? As Big Al notes, you can copy any style into your drawing (or include it in your template so it's already there). Create the table in the plane where you need it, import your data, and you're done. No OLE necessary. It's only a problem if you have to sync your table to their spreadsheet, and I think you can update the table manually. Or am I missing something?

[ColinPearson]

Hey @BIGAL thanks for your feedback!  I've done all that years back but I just really don't like Tables.  They glitch frequently for me and I end up having to re-adjust sizing/style/etc even after setting them up with a Tablestyle.  And I like to continuously use and improve drawings, so rather than working from a clean template, when I switch projects, I SaveAs, then delete all the previous project's stuff (except the improvements I have made) and continue with the new project.  Deleting all the Data Links is a pain.  Anyway, maybe I just don't like them LOL, but the real reason I can't use them here is interoperability with coworkers.  None of them will know what to do with a Table... beyond that, about half of them that may need the drawing can only get it if I email a copy to them, and they can't see the engineering server that would hold the excel files.   

[ColinPearson]

@CyberAngel It is though... I've got to able to get in, verify calcs, change as needed, etc quickly, and looking at an ugly AutoCAD table is nowhere near as user friendly as excel.  Do you know of some reason why I can't copy the OLE into different planes?  Seems like a silly limitation.

[SLW210]

Not sure about the OLE issue (limitation?).

 

It would be nice to know more about exactly what you are doing with the information, mostly just why does it need to be in the drawing?

 

Having need information in another program (PDF, Excel, Word, Internet, etc.) is the reason I have two monitors.

 

Why can't you just fix the drawing so that the top view is correct?

 

Another method I use is Paste Special, it can be inserted as AutoCAD Text (Mtext?) among other things and then rotated to any plane. Would that method be usable for this?

 

IIRC, somewhere on CADTutor (maybe elsewhere) there was a LISP to remove all Data Links. I use Tables when necessary, but leaving them linked when I am the only person that can use them is dangerous and if a file is changed, I create a new Table with a new Data Link. 

 

 

[ColinPearson]

Hey @SLW210 , thanks for the feedback.  This is communication between me and another engineer... I have most of the project, but he's a guru on a piece of equipment we are using, and he's got his own spreadsheet that he likes to see calcs done in.  So I've got to send him a link to my dwg so he can check the configuration of this piece of equipment, and it's a huge help to him if I already have the calcs run, in the format that he came up with.  I've got about 6 scenarios where we are using this equipment so far and will have about 20 by the end of it, so rather than trying to make sure he's correlating the correct dimensions/info from my drawing to the correct excel sheet somewhere on the server, it's nice to have a cop of the calcs right there next to each sketch.  I don't include the calcs in my Viewports in Paper Space, but in MS it's immediately obvious which calcs go with which scenario.  

 

I tried this question on another forum and got a similar response about me having the top view wrong... maybe it's my issue, so I'm open to the idea of 'fixing' the top view.  What I've got is a 3D structure with a bunch of stuff in it.  My top view is looking down from the 'sky' at the structure, so it's 'natural' plan view.  The useful view for me is physically from the west, looking east.  The way I drew all my stuff, that shows up on the left view.  Referencing my top view, Left View = looking-from-the-west and Right View = looking-from-the-east.  That seems pretty natural to me. 

 

Almost nobody else at my work except for the folks who do the fabrication drawings will work in 3D.  They've all got their templates set up so the Top View is the view you'd take looking at a printed drawing... that is, it doesn't correlate at all to any real-world orientation.  Since they only work 2D, it doesn't matter to them.  But where my coworker started his template that has his OLE excel calcs in it, THAT view to me is the Left View of the actual jobsite.  So I'm trying to COPYBASE his OLEs from his Top View and then PASTE into my Left view so that when I'm looking at my drawings (oriented the way I described above), I can see the OLE excel calcs right there.  I COULD paste all my sketches into my top view where the OLEs will paste into, but the my looking-from-the-west view would be in the wrong plane with respect to the physical jobsite.  

 

Is there some way I can redefine his drawing so that what is now his Tope View BECOMES his Left View, and then when I copy/paste into my Left View, everything works?

 

I had to clear out a bunch of stuff in the dwg to get under the size limit so there's nothing 3D left.  Also had to delete some proprietary stuff b/c my company is a bunch of freaks LOL.  But this is the destination drawing that I'm trying to paste into.  I put some rectangles with "X" in them where I need to OLEs to go.  Thanks again for trying to help, I really do appreciate it.

15813 C21 xref - Copy 2.dwg

[CyberAngel]

I suppose you've tried this already, but could you create a separate view that shows the spreadsheet and use another view for the model? Even if you're modifying the spreadsheet, all you have to do is click in that view, regardless of its orientation. I do that all the time, because I draw profiles that have to go in world coords, while the plan can be turned in any direction.

[ColinPearson]

18 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

I suppose you've tried this already, but could you create a separate view that shows the spreadsheet and use another view for the model? Even if you're modifying the spreadsheet, all you have to do is click in that view, regardless of its orientation. I do that all the time, because I draw profiles that have to go in world coords, while the plan can be turned in any direction.

 

Are you talking about putting the spreadsheets in PS next to a viewport looking at the view I want in MS?   If not, I guess I don't follow.  All I've ever done is use the VIEW command to switch between which top/left/front/btm/right/rear view I'm looking at.  Thanks!!

[BIGAL]

I was going to suggest like Cyberangel to use a layout can have multiple views overlapped under or over other views, with wipeouts etc All at different scales. I never played with views in Model but have been reading post about multiple views having different scales in Model. Not working.

 

Just a comment I have a client code and we pick a window panel and type, it automatically opens excel and runs an auto macro that checks is the size ok then read cell from the Excel  and will continue or get  a message about not meeting standards and no window inserted. 

Edited July 24 by BIGAL

[ColinPearson]

Makes sense about the layout y'all, thank you.

[SLW210]

To make the Left View the new Top view, use 3DRotate.

 

I would also recommend using Layouts.

[ColinPearson]

14 minutes ago, SLW210 said:

To make the Left View the new Top view, use 3DRotate.

 

I would also recommend using Layouts.

seems like that won't rotate OLEs... it's crazy to me that they make this so hard to work with!  

[CyberAngel]

It's not just Civil 3D, is it?? I have a civil ribbon and a vanilla ribbon. On the vanilla ribbon there's a View tab. In the middle of that is a Model Viewports panel. Open the Viewport Configuration option and you can get Single, Two: Vertical, Two: Horizontal, and more. If you prefer text,  (ai_tiledvp 2 "_V") gives you two vertical viewports, and you can change the view independently in either of them.

[ColinPearson]

1 minute ago, CyberAngel said:

It's not just Civil 3D, is it?? I have a civil ribbon and a vanilla ribbon. On the vanilla ribbon there's a View tab. In the middle of that is a Model Viewports panel. Open the Viewport Configuration option and you can get Single, Two: Vertical, Two: Horizontal, and more. If you prefer text,  (ai_tiledvp 2 "_V") gives you two vertical viewports, and you can change the view independently in either of them.

 

AutoCAD Mechanical 2023.

 

@BIGAL @CyberAngel Have y'all run into OLEs not being able to move before?  My first thought was to just recreate the calcs... I can use INSERTOBJ or PASTESPEC to insert a new  spreadsheet (or from an existing file), or COPY/PASTESPEC and all 3 of those give me a spreadsheet OLE in my left view like I want... but then I can't move it via grips or MOVE.  Any idea what's up with that? 

[CyberAngel]

The whole idea of using a model space viewport was to be able to fit the viewport to the spreadsheet, not vice versa. Can't you, e.g., draw a polyline border around the spreadsheet and define a view centered on that? I don't use OLE so I'm not sure what tools are available.

[ColinPearson]

10 minutes ago, CyberAngel said:

The whole idea of using a model space viewport was to be able to fit the viewport to the spreadsheet, not vice versa. Can't you, e.g., draw a polyline border around the spreadsheet and define a view centered on that? I don't use OLE so I'm not sure what tools are available.

I'm super confused... how/why would you create a view in MS?  The whole point to me is that it's just the whole world and you spin around and/or switch top/left/back/etc and look at it however you want.  I had no idea you could define different views in MS, much less create multiple one, I thought all that was for PS.

[BIGAL]

@CyberAngel "Model Viewports panel" There is a toolbar also for MViews, the great thing is if your metric can set the scale by typing a value into the scale box. We worked Metre so would type 4 or 5, 1:250 1:200 etc.