"Insert Picture" problem

Hello,

DOORS has a strange and unpleasant behaviour:
When we "copy n paste" a picture into some object, the picture does not behave the same way like it does when we insert it via client menu "Insert/Picture...".
"Copy n Paste": the image does not resize on changing the column width of the attribute
"Insert/Picture…": the image resizes on changing the column width of the attribute
The bad thing is that when we e.g. Export a Word document to DOORS, it seems that DOORS works with the first option. And that means that every picture from a Word import does not resize on column change.

Could you please help me to resolve the below two problems,
1. Word Export does not insert pictures with automatic resizing
2. "Copy n Paste" does not insert pictures with automatic resizing

Thanks in advance,
Muthurani
muthurani - Wed Mar 16 01:28:25 EDT 2011

Re: "Insert Picture" problem
llandale - Wed Mar 16 10:10:29 EDT 2011

Don't deal with graphics much, but I suspect that you fail to notice the difference between a doors 'Picture' and an 'OLE' diagram. I'm suspecting that some of your "pasting" involves "pictures" into the "object" and some of your pasting involves "OLE" into Object Text.

An "OLE" is a nice MS-Office recognized and packaged diagram. When you activate it, the corresponding Office tool (excel or word) is invoked to let you see it. OLE diagrams can exist in any Text attribute at a particular location, and a text attribute may contain several OLE diagrams. You copy/paste OLE while editing the housing Text attribute. OLE diagrams from obscure tools like MS-Project will require MS-Project to be installed on any client PC that wants to see the OLE.

A doors 'Picture' is a residual artifact from DOORS version -2.1 days before OLE. The Picture itself exists in the database or project in a manner I don't understand. More importantly, a picture may be reference from an Object (such that it appears the Picture is in the Object). The Picture is not in the Text, its part of the object itself and is displayed in the Main Object Heading/Text column (after the text). An object may have only one Picture. The GUI supports creating a new object to contain an inserted picture, but it seems DXL has perms to support adding one to an existing attribute. I'm ignorant about how picutures are displayed. There are few formats of pictures, Windows Meta File wmf comes to mind.

I suspect the following is no longer true: On the plus side it's possible, somehow, to have the same picture referenced by more than one object, such as all your specs showing the picture of the plane, and all updated when you somehow update the picture.

Pictures are inferior and should be avoided. Instead open MS-Word, create a new Word-Object, paste the bit map picture therein, close the Word Object, then copy the Word Object and paste it into your Object Text attribute. The picture is now wrapped in a nice neat OLE package and DOORS will treat it with all the respect due to all things Microsoft; including the ability to rezize it.

  • Louie