Select whatever you want to copy (in the schematic or data dispaly) and select edit>copy (ctrl C also works). Then go to MS word and select edit paste (ctrl v also works). This only works on the PC by the way.
How about from unix to MS Word? Screen captures don't scale well and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V don't seem to work through terminal emulators such as Reflection X or Exceed.
A method I use is to print from ADS to Adobe Acrobat writer. This preserves true type font and provides excellent resolution. Then import the new .pdf file into Word.
The downside of course is you need a full copy of Acrobat writer (~$200 on sale,) but it's well worth it for many applications. Best money I ever spent on a documentation package.
Select whatever you want to copy (in the schematic or data dispaly) and select edit>copy (ctrl C also works). Then go to MS word and select edit paste (ctrl v also works). This only works on the PC by the way.
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This works on a PC, but the line widths in schematics get exagerated, and the results are sometimes ugly and/or unreadable.
I have another approach that I'm still debugging, but the results look pretty nice. It gets a bit involved, but here's the procedure:
1) Go to Adobe's web site & download their Postscript printer driver and their generic PPD files.
2) Set up the printer driver so you can print to file in Postscript format. This is a scalable vector format.
2) Get a copy of Ghostscript and Ghostview, which are freeware(?) Postscript programs that allow you to view Postscript files.
3) There is a shareware program called PStoEdit that also includes something called ImportPS. The demo is crippled, and costs $40 to register. ImportPS allows you to use the regular Insert-Picture command in Word or PowerPoint to insert a Postcript image.
Once this is set up, it works OK, and the results look very good. There should be some sort of Postscript print-to-file capability for the Unix folks that could be used to generate the PS files, and you can then use Ghostscript and Import PS to get them into Word.
There are 3 issues (aside from the time & complexity of this process):
1) All the line widths get set to the finest size. This is better than having them be too fat like you get with cut & paste, but it loses a bit.
2) ImportPS can't handle the fonts correctly, and you have to select "convert to polygons" to get them to come out right. They look fine, but the file size goes way up. I've contacted the author about this.
3) NONE OF THIS WOULD BE NECESSARY IF AGILENT WOULD PROVIDE AN EXPORT TO WINDOWS METAFILE CAPABILITY IN THEIR SOFTWARE! Windows metafile is the native graphics format on PC's, and there is no reason why this should be difficult to do. The resulting files are in a compact vector format, and can be handled by a number of graphics & CAD programs.
I did some research and found a possible workaround:
Select "Edit>Paste Special...>Picture" in Word after copying to clipboard from the Print Dialog in ADS. The image is then placed inside the Word margins as expected and is in the better EMF format. It's an extra step or two but the results look better.
Will try this when I get into the office tomorrow again.
I tried the Paste Special method I mentioned in the previous post. It doesn't look to be much better I'm afraid. I will submit a defect report about this.
The problem is that there is no good vector based exchange format for documentation purposes in the Unix version of ADS.
A way around this problem that works very well is indeed to use print to postscript file in ADS on Unix. (Use the HP Color LaserJet PS driver in Xprinter to maintain the colors.) And, a bit more flexible compared to Adobe Acrobat, use a real PC based drawing tool like Corel Corporation Coreldraw version 9 (or higher) to import this file. I suspect Adobe Illustrator allows you to do the same but I have never tested this.
The postscript import filter of Coreldraw allows to import the ADS postscript file and maintains the quality of the postscript print output (which is vector format at 300 dpi or higher). You will get a Coreldraw graphic after the import that you can manipulate to your liking. This way you have a good quality PC based vector representation that can be exported to Microsoft Office or any other typesetting tool. Pre 9 Coreldraw versions do not work because the postscript import filter of these versions is not good enough.
There is one caviat (besides the fact that you need yet another tool): the fonts used inside ADS to provide TrueType capabilities in Unix creates TrueType fonts as a series of lines, segments, and points which are drawn with Xlib calls. These same calls are translated into hardcopy output when printing via Xprinter in ADS. As a result text strings are not maintained in the postscript but converted into a large number of curves/lines/points. This is not undone by the import filter. The quality of the text is good but you loose the capability to easily manipulate the strings. Typing things again is the only solution if you have to change an annotation.
I suspect this also why ImportPS has problems with the text annotations.
There is a special filter available for MS Word that will allow HPGL/2 format files to be insterted as a picture into any Word document. On the Windows/PC platform, you can set your printer to "Print to File." One of the choices of file types is HPGL/2 (*.hgl). Printing in this manner creates an HPGL/2 file that will insert into your document by means of the Word HPGL/2 filter.
Being the HPGL/2 file is a print option, you can use it to move graphics from any window that has a Print option.
Please be advised that the HPGL/2 file format does not recognize True Type fonts. This can cause the text in your ADS schematic to "disappear" whwn using the default font type in ADS. (Hershey Roman and Hershey Roman Narrow will work)
Another issue to be aware of is that ADS version 2002C fails to include the text in the HPGL/2 file regardless of font type. This is not a problem in ADS 2003A and higher versions.
In ADS 2003C (next released), the user will have the ability to specify the format of choice such as .jpg, .wmf, .gif, etc... when selecting print to file from ADS. These choices will not be in the drop box, just simply type in your selection. This will work from both Unix and PC, thus providing a much better way of sending ADS results from Unix to MS apps in PC.
With ADS 2003C I tested .jpg .wmf .gif on a HPUX Workstation. The .jpg and .gif works well, but when I use the .wmf extension the output will be Postscript. Any hints to solve this problem?
Then go to MS word and select edit paste (ctrl v also works). This only works on the PC by the way.