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M2Doc Sample Reports #A: Images

medini_1024169437

This is the first article of a series of articles about M2Doc as a new technology to generate Word reports out of medini models. You can find additional extensions (beta status) for 2022 R1 and 2022 R2 in our extension area on the online support page. An official release is planned for 2023 R1. All samples posted here are for 2022 R2. Main intention is to make you aware of the new technology but also to get any kind of feedback.

The first sample is about image generation. There is API to generate images out of diagrams or out of external image documents, either as vector or raster image, scaled, ... The required m2doc expression is very simple. Just take any diagram or external document as input variable and use:

{ m:anyDiagram.asImage() }

In the sample you will find other variants of the same for example, with format parameter. Open the sample project, select the report configuration and use "Report | Generate M2Doc Report" from the context menu:

Or use the new "Auto-Generate" tool from within the configuration editor:

Happy Reporting

Jan

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medini_1005899080

Hi Jan,

my installation is not working. There are two packages in the Zip:

1. Eclipse

2. M2Doc

M2Doc seems to work, but "Eclipse" not. As a result, I do not have this option in the menu or as "Button" in the Tool (2022R2)

Admin rights are granted.

Best regards,

Sven

medini_1024169437

Hi Sven,

please ignore the Eclipse option and try to install only the m2doc feature. If for whatever reason you still have no menu or button in the tool, you may need to start once with -clean.

Hope that helps, if not, please come back here.

Jan

medini_1005899080

Hi Jan,

after starting with -clean option, I have the context menu, but the button is not visible.

Sven

medini_1024169437

Hi Sven,

we are currently using checklists as report configuration input (similar approach as for FLEXSIKO). You can create such a configuration via "New -> M2Doc Configuration".

Could you check that menu?

What I want to say: these special checklists have 2 sections and the mentioned button is only sown if we detect these two sections and treat it as "m2doc configuratiom".

Anyhow, I suggest you us the context menu fist and see how far you get, the button is just a short cut to be quicker once report config and template is up.

Hint: There is also a similar menu at project root level which would generate all reports found in the project at once.

Happy Reporting

Jan

medini_1005899080

Hi Jan,

it works now, and: finally I understood the procedure. ;-)

Sven

medini_1005899080

Hi Jan,

where are the variables defined? If I open the word document (template), I cannot see any variables. Is this a problem with the word-view? Or is there a separate file where everything is configured?

Sven

medini_1059007410

Hi Sven,

you ask all the right questions of the user guide ;-), so I guess it's the best that I share the current version here:

The first chapters (including installation and usage within medini) are more or less complete, the .docx part is still in work.

Any feedback on it is welcome and will be considered for future updates.

Happy reporting,

Nils

medini_1005899080

Hi Nils,

just created my own report. :-)

I know this feature is not ready, but here a (perhaps more complex) question:

I want to include a cause/effect net into a report. Can I create this automatically, or is the only way to take a screenshot and then integrate the image?

Sven

medini_1024169437

Hi Sven,

I can answer that: cause/effect nets are special because they don't have any persisted diagram model at the moment.

Anyway, we have git that request multiple times now so we want to somehow support that for m2doc in the future, although its not easy with the current way of implementation.

So at this moment, not possible unfortunately. Maybe we find a workaround. We will post it here when we have it.

Jan

medini_1060067341

Hello Jan/Nils,

Thanks for putting this example together. It is very helpful.

Is there a way to scale images to fit the width of the pages of my word template?

Thanks,

Lucas

medini_1059007410

Hi Lucas,

Not directly, but with asImage().fit(450,1000) you can scale it to a certain width (450 pixel, and large enough height to not restrict it by that), you just have to find the right pixel width for your page - which will differ for landscape and portrait orientation, that's not automatic.

Cheers,

Nils

medini_1024169437

Nils, is there a service to at least get the page dimension?

I did not manage in Word to express 100% fit or that alike.

Jan

medini_1059007410

Jan,

not that I'm aware of, I haven't found anything like that in either the code or M2Doc discussions.

Nils

medini_1024169437

Thanks Nils,

I quickly checked the available m2doc services and it seems that none of them allows the m2doc template or any other service to quickly get hands on the page dimensions.

So maybe this is something we have to add as our own service. I added this to the list of "todos"

Jan

medini_1063298071

When exporting a diagram using m2doc, the diagram is not drawn exactly as it is in the tool. I'm seeing artifacts like elements shifting slightly, increasing in size, and text no longer fitting. This results in a difficult to read output. When I export the diagram as an image file using the GUI, I do not see these artifacts.

Are there any guidelines for creating the diagrams in the tool which, when followed, will result in a clean m2doc export? Does a certain grid size with snap to grid need to be followed? Should line widths be a certain minimum size? Should certain fonts be used or avoided? And so on...

The image below is an example. In the GUI, the "ABCD" and "12345" parts are fully drawn inside the "a component" box. Also, the Road User text does not overlap the "a component" box. Finally, the "a component" box does not have a scroll bar shown in the GUI, but it was drawn as part of the image exported by m2doc.

medini_1024169437

Hi Erik,

a few questions on this to help giving guidance:

You wrote that the diagram export to an image works nicely, which format did you use there?
Which format are you using in m2doc?

Some background info: our m2doc integration offers vector but also raster support. Unfortunately m2doc itself only offers EMF/WMF vector images which is a rather Windows specific format and there is not much support for that. We had to implement our own rendering code to render our diagrams to EMF/SWT and I suspect that this might be one potential root cause.

The other one might be that we need to render the diagram in the background without an open editor. It might be that that does not work well, especially if you have monitor scaling > 100% (that Windows feature that allows you to see your source code on 4K monitors even if you are 50+ and your eyes get bad). Maybe that is something you can test:

Try to render raster image in your report
Try with 100% screen scaling

Happy Reporting

Jan

medini_1063298071

Jan,

It does appear to be related to DPI scaling. Setting scaling to 100% and restarting helped. I also found that by opening the properties of the windows shortcut to the tool and turning High DPI scaling override, choosing "System" also helped but allowed me to keep my normal monitor scaling.

medini_1024169437

Erik, this is great, thanks for sharing your findings here with all others.

Happy Reporting

Jan

medini_1057179964

Hello,

I test to do my first M2Doc report. With this example i can export my diagram but too big for the document.

what is the control to keep the ratio of image or diagram in M2Doc, and what is the control to adapt the size to the page width ?

Best regards,

Philippe

medini_1024169437

Hi Philippe, sorry, this post somehow slipped.

As mentioned by Nils earlier in this article, you can scale any image to a fixed or reasonable size using for example image.fit(450,1000)

I am not sure about the second part, you have different pages with different sizes in your document?

More precisely, do you need to get the page dimension at runtime?

Jan