OLE importing into PlotMaker

[Anonymous]

I'm putting together CDs for a 45 sheet building. So I have to be able to link text from word processing. So I imported a key note file from WordPerfect into the specified layout sheet and only the first page of the file showed up. So I tried changing to MS WORD and the same thing -- only the first sheet shows up. Then I did copy and paste from both WORD and WordPerfect and the same thing. I copied the entire text file and only the first page showed up.

The manual and HELP both say Plotmaker is object oriented and will import OLE from at least MS Word. But it doesn't. What am I doing wrong?

[Ben Odonnell]

May be this will explain the problem for you?

HTH
Cheers.
Ben

[Anonymous]

Yes I read that but I question that the problem is in Word or WordPerfect. In Pagemaker, I can import and manipulate any amount of text, wrap it around images and other linked objects and make the pages look the way I want them to. But that's beside the point.

How do most of you import text into Plotmaker?
I see the page limitation applies to OLE, but how bout simple unlinked copy and paste? That too is limited to one page.

I suppose what you are telling me is that with the most powerful CAD program on the planet, there isn't a simple way to import or create or place AND MANIPULATE BLOCKS OF TEXT for multi-page GENERAL NOTES (for me it's at least 3 36X48 sheets) or extensive KEY NOTES without going to the guys in NZ for yet another add-on? Or publishing them in 8-1/2X11s like specs?

Don't mean to be cranky, but after climbing ArchiCAD's steep learning curve over these past 16 months, and using it to design and CD a $5 million office building, I'm finding small items like this you call "wish list items" that are beginning to drive me nuts.

[tsturm]

I read the link to the OLE on GS tech support page.

Here is what I have to add or suggest.

The maximum page you can make in Word is 22" x 22". Not quite 24" x 36" but you are close.

So here is a proposed solution. make the paper 12" tall x 18" wide. Make your type size half of what you normally want to read. If you want 10 point as the final size make your text 5 point. Then use columns to wrap the text around.

This should get you a single page. You will have to break up the word document into the necessary pages into A001, A002, A003....

Then place the OLE linked information into PM and scale the image up 2x to fill the page.

You will then have the linked page with the text in columns. Like a PageMaker document.

HTHs

What I had to recently was copy the text from Word into a PM drawing file. I then copied the drawing on the page several times to make it look like several columns on the layout. I then slid the text around till I got it to look like text flowed from column to column.

Not an easy way, but I could copy and paste updated text from Word to the PM drawing and it would flow around to the new windows. However, I still needed to check that nothing got cut off.

Hope my other method works better. Have not gotten a chance to try it.

[Anonymous]

We have also been having trouble importing Word documents using the OLE features with Plotmaker. It seems that the best we can do is to get an image about 13" x 13" to appear in Plotmaker, even when the Word formatting is for 22" x 22" (which would be just fine for us.)

I believe the GS tech literature in that OLE can only import the first page of Word documents, but it will clearly import images larger than 6"x9".

We're really eager to figure this out. Any ideas?

Thanks,
-peter baltay

By the way, importing images at 50% scale and blowing them up in Plotmaker will work, but we would loose the ability to print out our text files in other media (ie to fax a schedule to a window vendor), as other Word formatting, such as column widths, is not scalable.

[tsturm]

I did my method to work. I set my page to 12 x 18 and then changed the font to 5 point. Then inserted the page into PM. Here I had to enlarge the page 2x.

If worked fine for Windows XP Pro and Word.

Could you Peter, tell me more about your system?

If you are on the Mac this will not work as OLE is not functioning on the Mac. However, you could copy and paste as a picture or as text into a PM drawing. This would allow you to move the graphic or text around on the page easier than a large block of text. And it is quite easy to copy and paste in the text as it changes. Perhaps not as fast as updating a link, but nearly so.

HTH

[Anonymous]

Hi,

We are windows XP pro based, with new machines, on AC 9.0, and Word 2003.

Try as we may, we cannot get our large OLE imports to work without cropping. We routinely have Word documents of 11" wide by 22" high (schedules and notes) that get cropped off at about 13" length.

Have you have any luck with importing larger Word files?

Thanks,