Lesson 17

Visio, web, spreadsheet

Not everyone who needs the scheme has EasyCAS. The drawing office works in Visio, the customer opens a link in a browser, the controller wants the numbers in Excel. This lesson hands the same network to each of them.

Time about 25 minutes You need lesson14.gf9 and lesson13.gf9; Visio or another program that opens .vsdx, a spreadsheet program You finish with a Visio drawing, the scheme on the web, and tables in a spreadsheet

Export the drawing to Visio

Open lesson14.gf9 and choose File → Export to MSVisio. The save dialog offers two formats:

File type	For
Visio 2013+ (*.vsdx)	the default; current Visio and the programs that read its format
Visio 2003-2010 (*.vdx)	old Visio versions; the file is larger, the pictures are embedded in it

Save lesson14.vsdx and open it in Visio. An empty scheme is not exported — the program says so instead.

See what came across
- Every element is one shape. A vector symbol keeps its real geometry and colours; a raster symbol comes as a picture, with its transparency.
- Connections are live connectors, glued to the connection points of the shapes. Drag COMP to the left: the line to P1 follows and Visio re-routes it, instead of leaving it behind.
- Shape Data holds the ID and the visible rows of the card. In Visio open Data → Shape Data and click T1: the window, titled with the ID, lists ID ID4 first, then the rows of the card — Company AIRpipe, Website, Label d-1 in_Equal Tee, the maker's own ID DN00060, Modelnumber, Element Connector, Type Tee, Diameter (mm) 23, Diameter_ex (in) "1", Max_pressure (psi) 300, Material Aluminum. Each row keeps its unit in its name. Click B1 and the same window shows its rows, the results of the calculation among them.
- Captions with references (lesson 5) go with their values, as in the PDF report — a caption Flow ID12.Qn arrives as Flow 1048 NL/min, not as the reference.
- The drawing order of the sheet is kept: what lies on top in EasyCAS lies on top in Visio.
The drawing is for someone who works in Visio and has no EasyCAS. It is a picture with data, not a scheme: nothing in Visio recalculates it, and it does not come back.

The scheme in Visio, T1 selected: a shape with the data of its card, and connectors glued to the shapes. The page is named Scheme.
Publish the scheme on the web

File → Upload to WEB, or the button on the toolbar, sends the scheme with its results and a summary of the calculation to the EasyCAS web service, where it opens in a browser by a link. It needs an activated licence and an Internet connection.

Upload the result of the scenario and the mode you are in:
1. Calculate first — what goes up is the calculation, not only the drawing.
2. Press Upload to WEB. The program says what it is about to send — Scenario: …, Mode: Design or Audit — and that a new upload of the same scenario and mode replaces the previous one on the web. Press OK.
3. When the upload is done, the browser opens your projects on the web service, with the scheme in it.
The web keeps a calculation per scenario and mode. So for lesson13.gf9 you can upload the audit of As is and the audit of Proposed one after the other, and the two stand side by side; the same pair uploaded again replaces itself. The Dynamic mode has no place on the web: in it the program asks you to switch to Design or Audit first.

Before sending, the program says which calculation goes up — here the Proposed scenario, in Design mode.

If the upload fails, every step of it, with the time and the errors, is in EasyCAS_upload.log in the Windows temporary folder (%TEMP%). Attach it to a request to support. If the summary of the calculation cannot be built, nothing is sent half-complete — the upload is cancelled with a message.

Take the numbers of an item to a spreadsheet

Back in lesson14.gf9, calculate and click COMP. Right-click a row of the Item table:

Command	Puts on the clipboard
Copy value (Ctrl+C)	the value only — a number, a model number, a web address
Copy row	one line as text, for instance Cs = 4603.41 €
Copy all	the whole table, tab-separated: pasted into a spreadsheet it falls into three columns — name, unit, value

Choose Copy all and paste into an empty sheet of Excel. The values come in the units shown on the screen, as a person reads them — CO2 in grams on the screenshot, because that file had the Weight list on g. The arrow of ↔ Compressor selection stays behind: only the name is copied. The same menu works in the card preview of the catalog. Clicking a row no longer copies anything by itself: copying is something you ask for, so the clipboard keeps what you put there — a copied element or a cyclogram.

Copy all: the card of an item in three columns of a spreadsheet.

Take whole tables

Most tables of EasyCAS go to a spreadsheet one way or another:

Where	How	What you get
Compare scenarios (lesson 12)	Copy	the active tab — Figures, a tab of changes or Measures — tab-separated on the clipboard
Problems panel	Save...	the list as a PDF or an Excel workbook (.xlsx)
Variant calculation (lesson 8)	Copy	the table of the variants
Cyclogram (lesson 14)	Actions → Export consumers list	the work cycle as .xlsx or .csv, to fill in and import back
Dynamic results (lesson 15)	Export CSV...	the ticked signals: separator `;`, time in ms, a decimal point

Open lesson13.gf9, choose Scenario → Compare scenarios..., stay on Figures, press Copy and paste into the spreadsheet: the three scenarios of lesson 12 with the change columns, ready for the chart of the presentation to the plant manager. Then open the Problems panel, press Save... and choose Excel workbook (*.xlsx) as the type: the workbook opens when it is written.

When it does not work

What you see	Why	What to do
The scheme is empty - nothing to export	There is nothing on the sheet.	Open the scheme first.
Old Visio does not open the .vsdx	Visio before 2013 reads only .vdx.	Export again with the type *Visio 2003-2010 (.vdx)**.
Upload to WEB works in Design or Audit mode	The scheme is in Dynamic mode.	Switch the mode and upload again.
Failed to upload project: connection to the server was lost	No connection, or it broke during the upload.	Try again; if it repeats, send `EasyCAS_upload.log` from `%TEMP%`.
The number of your projects has exceeded the norm	The web account holds as many projects as it may.	Delete projects you no longer need on the web service.
A copied element is gone from the clipboard	Something else was copied after it.	Copy it again; a click on a table row does not copy any more.
Numbers pasted into Excel are text	The decimal separator of Windows is a comma, the values come with a point.	Use the import of the spreadsheet with the point as decimal separator, or replace it.

Try this next

Export lesson13.gf9 to Visio in the Proposed scenario: R2 is there, and the zone labels arrive with their values.
Export the dynamic run of lesson 15 to CSV and draw p ID6 out in the spreadsheet next to p ID7 out.