Working with Other Applications


From time to time, you may want to use the SansGUI environment with other software applications in a cooperative manner. This section describes a few features supported by SansGUI in the Windows environment.

Transferring Grid Data

Data in Grid Views can be copied into a text buffer and pasted into other applications that accept pasting from the text buffer. The buffer SansGUI uses is in text with tab delimited format. It does not support copying and pasting elements other than plain text.

To copy data from a SansGUI Grid View to other applications, using Microsoft Excel as an example, do:

To copy data from other applications to a SansGUI Grid View, do:

Incorporating Plots

The data plots can be exported to a file with either Windows metafile (WMF), bitmap (BMP), or JPEG (JPG) format. The file can then be imported to any applications that support these formats. See the Plotting Data section earlier for more details on using the Export dialog to save a plot in a file.

Incorporating Canvas Views

You may want to put a section of an assembly or the entire assembly in a Canvas View in your technical report, slideshow or other publications. SansGUI supports three means to do it: 1) Exporting Enhanced Metafiles: if you only need a static picture, in vector form, of the current Canvas View, 2) Exporting Image Files: if you need to capture the raster image of the current Canvas View, or 3) Using OLE Objects: if you would like to resize, zoom, scroll, and crop the picture in the other application.

Exporting Enhanced Metafiles

If you only need a static picture of the current Canvas View to be incorporated in a document with another application, you can export the Canvas View to the Windows Clipboard (in memory) or to an external file in the Windows Enhanced Metafile (EMF) format. Once exported, you can insert it into any document with any Windows program that supports EMF. An example is to include a picture of a the Canvas View in a Microsoft Word document:

Exporting Image Files

You can also export the current Canvas View to bitmap (.BMP) or JPEG (.JPG) image files for publication purposes. To do it, select Bitmap... or JPEG... submenu item from Export Image File in the context menu.

Using OLE Objects

SansGUI Canvas View is an OLE server that supports object embedding. Here we uses Microsoft Word as a container application to demonstrate how the Canvas View contents can be incorporated in a Word document.

Writing Data Filters

Because SansGUI has a highly accessible application programming interface and an easy-to-learn data object format, you are encouraged to write data filters to import data from and export data to other applications. The user overriding routines is the mechanism to doing such tasks. Please consult Chapter 6 Overriding Simulator Routines for details.

 



C:\FH_Suite\htmlgifs\home.gif Customizing Plots Managing Common Objects

SansGUI Modeling and Simulation Environment Version 1.2

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