SW2006 General Tables - 2 Q's

[brrian]

I'm considering the use of 2006's General Tables, but have two questions:

1. It appears that you cannot save any text within the tables in a templates--can anybody verify this?

2. Can you (and if so, how easy would it be to) populate the cells of a General Table with values from an Excel spreadsheet? Has anybody done so yet?

Thanks!

Brian

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

1. Can you give a better explanation of what you mean?

2. Do you mean by the General table "automatically" reading or referencing an Excel spreadsheet, or manually?


Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of faq559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions faq559-1091

 

[brrian]

1. If I create a table, enter some text in some of its cells, then save that table as a template, when I later insert it, the text values are gone (only formatting is retained).

2. A little of both? I'm thinking of a macro that would read an Excel file and write its values to a general table (general table cell A1 value = excel spreadsheet cell A1 value, and so on). I'll use enhancement requests to try to persuade SW to automate the link somehow (perhaps a direct link).

 

[smcadman]

What are you using the table for? A BOM? Revisions? Is it for part/assembly properties?

Flores
SW 2006 SP1.0

 

[brrian]

None of the above--it's a Table of Contents. Our drawings are arranged in sets (a project has it's own set of drawings). They're typically about 25 pages, and we put a table of contents on the firt page so a reader can quickly find a part they're looking for.

I currently accomplish this by simply embedding an Excel spreadsheet, but now that we have General Tables, I'd like to investigate those as an alternative (hence the question).

Thanks,

Brian

 

[smcadman]

We do not do that here, but we did that a previous company. I was going to add a custom property in the part/assembly which was the page number, and let that populate a BOM, but I didn't because some parts are used in several different projects.
You also might want to try a BOM, with 2 numbers in the balloon, and have the top number as the item number in the BOM, and the bottom number as the page number. I have seen the bottom number in a balloon either be the quantity or the page number.

Flores
SW 2006 SP1.0