The Visio Page object's SetFormulas and GetResults methods requires an array containing ShapeID,Section,Row,Column, in order to batch read/write from/to the shapesheet.
However, I find that in drawings with a lot of shapes, after adding and deleting shapes, Visio's shape ID's cross over the short integer limit of 32768. It seems Visio keeps a short integer ID property on shapes called ID16, but passing the ID16 into that ShapeID,Section,Row,Column array does not seem to work, and raises an 'Unexpected End of File' error.
Is it possible somehow to use the SetFormulas and GetResults methods on drawings where shape ID's have crossed over the short integer limit? Or is there a way to 'restack' shape ID's in a drawing such that, as long as there are less than 32768 shapes in the page, then all the ID's will be below the limit? I know that copying all the shapes into a new drawing will buy some time, but the issue could quickly recur after adding/removing shapes from the page, which my software does a lot of.
The only other alternative I can think of is to capture cases where the shape ID has exceeded the short integer limit, and revert to routines that do operations cell by cell and shape by shape, rather than in a single batch.
I fear there is no solution for this, Microsoft needs to create Int32 versions of SetResults/GetResults/SetFormulas/Getformulas/DropMany.
As PC's have become a lot faster these days it becomes easier to create huge Visio diagrams.
Rerendering a diagram to a new page does help to win you some time, but a 16 bits Shape ID (really a 15 bit limitation) is kind of silly in 2021!
Related
Concerned about code falling over in scenarios I haven't thought of during testing and so wanted to understand the difference between these two approaches, which appear to accomplish exactly the same thing:
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange(1)
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Item(1)
Context is: Identifying the shape in which the active cursor position is, or if whole shapes selected, the first shape in the selected items (i.e. if there's an active cursor inside a shape, it returns that shape; if the user has selected multiple shapes, it returns the first shape).
Looking at MSDN:
For first option, appears you can add the index in the brackets to access whatever shape number in selected shapes https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/powerpoint.shaperange
But looking at "Item", appears to do exactly the same thing by definition "Returns a single Shape object from the specified ShapeRange collection."
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/powerpoint.shaperange.item
What is the difference and in what situations can it lead to erroring out?
TIA
That link posted by Tim Williams gives a good explanation of what's going on - well worth a read.
In answer to your specific questions:
There's no difference in the two lines of code. Since .Item is the default property of a collection object, ShapeRange(1) is doing the same as ShapeRange.Item(1). Coding style is a matter of personal preference, but most VBA developers avoid implicit references. Having said that, I'd say most of us do leave out .Item when referencing a collection, eg ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1"). If you're interested, I do find .Item useful for code that is wrapped in a With ... End With block:
With ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
.Add After:=.Item(.Count)
End With
No, your code won't fail. The only reason it might fail would be if Microsoft changed its default property for the Collection object, and you're more likely to be eaten by a shark while being struck by lightening on the same day your lottery numbers came up.
I'm working with python-ppt to create a portfolio of candidates in a Powerpoint presentation. There is one candidate per slide and each of them has provided information about themselves like name, contacts and a minibio (the problem I'm here to solve)
The text_frame, created with values of height and width, must fit the slide but must a contain all lenght of minibios, which is not happening.
In a long phase (>200 char, with font size 12) it exceeds the size of the text box and get "out" of the slide, so, in presentation mode or a PDF file, the "overrun" of text is lost
Is there any way to confine the text to the shape/size of the text_frame? (extra help if the solution wont change font size)
Just found one parameter that helped to find the answer
When creating a text_box object with slides.shapes.add_textbox() and adding a text_frame to it, the text_frame.word_wrap = True limits the text to be contained inside the dimentions of the text_box
The code shows it better
# creates text box with add_textbox(left, top, width, height)
txBox = slide.shapes.add_textbox(Cm(16),Cm(5),Cm(17),Cm(13))
tf = txBox.text_frame
tf.word_wrap = True
Before word_wrap parameter
After word_wrap parameter
The short answer is "No". PowerPoint is a page-layout environment, and much like the front page of a newspaper, text "story" content needs to be trimmed to fit the allotted space.
We're perhaps not used to this because word-processing, spreadsheet, and web-page content is "flowed" into a (practically) unlimited space, but the area of a PowerPoint slide is quite finite. Also, using it for large text blocks is somewhat of an off-label use. There is a certain amount of flexibility provided by reducing the font size, but not as much as one might expect. Even accommodating 20% additional text requires what appears as a pretty radical change in font size.
I've encountered this problem again and again, and the only solution I have ever seen work reliably is hand-curating the content to fit.
python-pptx has one experimental feature to address this but its operation has never been very satisfactory and it's tricky to get working. https://python-pptx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api/text.html#pptx.text.text.TextFrame.fit_text
The business of fitting text is the role of a rendering engine, which python-pptx is not.
I’m trying to find a solution for the 2-dimensional packing problem using Excel (Formulas, Solver, VBA).
But apart from finding said solution, I would like to bring back this topic as base for discussion, because I realized during my extended web-searches that this problem (or variations of it) creates headaches for many people – novice and professional users.
The explanation for my problem:
I am trying to fit rectangular packages in rectangular containers. Usually there is one larger box and 2-5 smaller boxes to ship.
On average, there is still capacity of 30-50% left in the containers, so I want to calculate how many additional standardized boxes would fit in this free space to fill up the container.
There are no constraints, as long as the boxes fit into the container.
Height and weight are irrelevant.
The Boxes can be rotated by 90°.
One 40’ container is 1203cm long and 233cm wide.
The standardized boxes are 85cm x 70cm
The other boxes have different sizes.
I checked bin-packing algorithms but as of now I was not able to implement any solution in excel. I’d prefer a way to calculate this using Excel Solver or VBA, but my VBA-programming knowledge is limited.
The knapsack problem does not apply here in my opinion, although it is mentioned many times in this context.
In my case, I would be happy with a solution giving me something like: “You can fit at least x additional Boxes in the container”. Some inaccuracy does not matter – meaning up to 25% less boxes than possible. Too much boxes, on the other hand, are a no-go.
Now, do you guys have any idea how to get started here or even accomplish this? Maybe there is even a super-simple approximation I don’t know of?
Thanks!
UPDATE
After quite some time, I finally found some hours to get into this problem again.
I read Erwin Kalvelagen ‘s Blogposts and some papers on bin packing algorithms.
Also, the solver option is off the table.
I decided to go for a Bottom-Left-Algorithm (BLT) with some restraints (not just greedy).
Quick explanation of the BLT-Algorithm: Each box is placed in the bottom-most and left-most possible position in a given area (container). When a box is placed, it creates two new “corners” where the remaining boxes can be placed. Initially, the boxes are sorted by length (to start with the longest box) and place them in a 2-dimensional array. Then the starting point will be set in an Array (x, y coordinates) – the first coordinates are obviously 0, 0 as we start in an empty container. Then the algorithm would try to place the first box in the bottom-left corner with coordinates 0, 0 – which of course works perfectly. Then the starting cords would be replaced by the coords of one of the new corners and the coords of the other corner will be added to C. this would loop until all non-standard boxes are loaded. Then the algorithm would add standardized boxes if possible (and count them). The loop would end, if adding more boxes is not possible anymore due to constraints.
The dimension of the non-standard boxes will be entered in a worksheet - one box per row. The dimensions of the container and the standardized boxes will be written there as well.
Constraints would be, that no box can overlap another and all boxes would have to inside the container. Although rotation is practically possible, it is not necessary to implement it in the code as I am trying to orient the packages along the container.
Here is some pseudo code of the BLT-Algorithm I found:
**Procedure BLF(width, height,maxWidth)**
begin
initialize the arrays x and y
initialize the list and add the null point
for all rectangles
initialize choosePoint as impossible
while choosePoint is impossible and j < length of list
if the rectangle could be placed in a specific point
choose the point
endif
endwhile
if choosePoint is possible
update the arrays x and y
remove the point from the position choosePoint
from list
add the points (xi+width,yi),(xi,yi+height) to the points list
else
if (width > maxWidth) the problem has no solution
else xi = 0 and yi = max(heightk + yk)
where k 2 {1, . . . , i − 1}
endif
endif
endfor
solutions: the arrays x and y with (xi, yi)
the coordinates of rectangle i
end
Now, although I know a lot (like really A LOT) more about packing algorithms I am still not very experienced with VBA. Especially not with implementing algorithms.
So again I would be happy for any help you can give me to get started with the implementation.
So I started off with this (I know it’s really nothing, but I find it quite difficult):
Sub BLT1()
Dim Boxes As Variant, i As Integer, j As Integer ‘’Boxes dimensions
Dim Cntnr As Variant, a As Integer, b As Integer ‘’Container dimensions
Dim BLPoints As Variant ‘’Array with coordinates of bottom-left corners
Boxes = Range("B11:C15")
Cntnr = Range("D2:E2")
‘’Now I would like to add the first coordinates (0, 0) to the BLPoints
‘’Then I want to pick the first box and fit it in the container at the (0, 0) coordinates
‘’Then I want to update the BLPoints array with the new coordinates
…
End Sub
I’m looking forward to any constructive feedback and advice!
This is not a very easy problem. Some possible approaches are:
A MIP (Mixed Integer Programming) Model. The most complex part are the no-overlap constraint. For each box in the container we need to make sure it does not occupy space used by another box. The MIP approach has the advantage that we can find optimal solutions, or very good solutions with an indication how much we are away from a possible best solution (i.e. an indication of the quality of the solution).
A constraint programming model. Similar to the MIP model, but some constructs are easier to handle (i.e. the OR construct needed to formulate the no-overlap constraints).
A heuristic or meta-heuristic approach.
I implemented quickly a MIP model and it turns out you can get optimal or near-optimal solutions quite quickly. The solution below was found in less than a minute using a commercial MIP solver:
The yellow boxes are the required non-standard boxes and the blue ones are the optional standard boxes.
See here for more information about these no-overlap constraints. Here are the no-overlap constraints for this problem.
I have a report that is generated in PowerPoint, and underneath many of the graphs, there is text that tells the reader to refer to pages in the appendix. I would like to be able to dynamically reference these slides.
For example, under a graph I might have the text "Please see appendix page 54", but I need the 54 to be linked to a slide so that if I insert another slide it will say 55.
Is this possible to do in VBA? I do not expect somebody to write my code for me, I would just like to know if this is a reasonable thing to do before I spend hours attempting to do it.
Side note: I feel horrible asking a question about MS Office on here, but since I believe it would need to be implemented in VBA (I don't think this functionality is built in by default) I think that it is a relevant question.
No need to feel horrible asking this here.
How one might do this:
In PPT, shapes, slides and even the presentation itself can have an associated tag collection; named string values. For example, assuming a reference to the shape in oSh, you can do:
oSh.Tags.Add "AssociatedSlideId", "293"
In this case, you'd apply this tag to your graph; the 293 would be the SlideID of the slide you want to reference. Each slide has a unique SlideID assigned when it's created; the SlideID won't change when you move the slide around/add/delete slides.
To read the tag from the shape:
Debug.Print oSh.Tags("AssociatedSlideId")
In this case, that'd return "293". Feed that to FindBySlideID to get the SlideIndex of the slide (ie, the ordinal position of the slide in the presentation). Or ask it for SlideNumber if you want the number of the slide that'll appear in number placeholders (usually, but not always the same as slide index).
Debug.Print ActivePresentation.Slides.FindBySlideID(clng("293")).SlideIndex
You might also tag the textbox or other shape that you want to use to hold the reference, then write a function along the lines of:
Function ShapeTaggedWith(oSl as Slide, sTagName as String, sTagValue as String) as Shape
This would iterate through the shapes on slide oSl looking for one with a tag named sTagName, value = sTagValue and return it to the caller if found.
Now you can find the shape that's nominated as your caption for the graph, let's call it, and change its text to match the SlideIndex (or SlideNumber) of the slide the chart's supposed to reference.
Hope that's all moderately clear; if not, that's why the StackOverflow gods gave us comments.
I am trying to write a VBA program for Autocad, and one of its function has to allow the user to select an entity in Autocad and scale it none uniformly. Currently i see offset and scaleentity method, but as far as i can tell, they are both uniform resizing.
My current code use selectionSets, AcadEntity and selectOnScreen to accomplish the target selection. So is there any VBA code to scale the selected entity none uniformly?
While it is not possible to scale entities non-uniformly in the AutoCAD designer itself, I wonder if it could by any API at all. It ís however possible for blocks.
So you might want to try to (temporarily) convert the entity to a block, insert the block with different X, Y (and Z) scales, explode it and delete the block reference again.