OLE for Office Applications

When you link data, it is not copied into the QY CAD document, but is simply displayed there, in the position and scale defined by the source document. When you create a link to another document, QY CAD stores a link that indicates the source of the data.

For example, you can use spreadsheet created in Microsoft Excel to drive the dimensions in a QY CAD model. You can link the spreadsheet to the QY CAD document. As you make changes to the spreadsheet, you can easily update the changes in the Solid Edge document by updating the link stored in the QY CAD document.

You should create a link if you want updates to the source document to appear in your QY CAD Draft document. A link is also appropriate if you want to insert a large document, because only the link is stored in the QY CAD document, not a complete copy of the inserted data.

When a document is linked into QY CAD, you can edit it from within QY CAD or directly from the hard disk. Because they are linked, changing the document in one place affects all occurrences. To edit the document from within QY CAD, use the Binder command on the Application menu when you point to Manage. You can also open the document by selecting it through Windows Explorer, QY CAD Find Files, or the application's Open command. If the application used to create the document supports OLE for D&M and in-place editing, then you can edit the graphics of the linked document while in the QY CAD document that references it.

When you create a file from a template, you do not establish an updateable link. For example, suppose your template contains a title block that you want to appear in all draft files. If you link from the template file, you will get the correct title block in the new file without automatic update. Any changes made to the title block in the template file will not affect the files created from the template. However if you link from each new draft file, updates will occur every time the block file changes.

When you embed data, it is copied to a specified location in the QY CAD document. Unlike with linking, embedded data is no longer connected to its source, and changes in one copy do not affect the other. The embedded data is not translated; it remains in the foreign data format.

For example, you can insert notes created in a word processing application such as Microsoft Word into a QY CAD document. When you embed the notes in the design document, they become part of the QY CAD document. You can make changes to the notes while you have the QY CAD document open. Simply double-click on the embedded notes and they are opened in the application used to create them.

You should embed data in your QY CAD document if you want the data to become part of the document and you want to make only a single reference to the embedded data. Since an embedded document is no longer connected to the source document, you can change the data in your QY CAD document without affecting the source. On the other hand, embedded documents are not updated when you update the source document. Also, once embedded, the data becomes part of the QY CAD document, increasing its size.

Another reason to embed is that a document containing only embedded data (no links) is portable you can send the single document to someone who does not have access to the source documents.

In addition to linking and embedding, QY CAD Draft also supports shared embedding for OLE for D&M documents. The shared embed allows multiple references in a graphic document to point to the same embedded document. This helps reduce document size while keeping the advantages of embedding.

You should share embed data in your QY CAD Draft document if you want the data to reside in the draft document and you want to make multiple references to same embedded data. When you edit the embedded data, the changes are seen in the display of the data by each of the multiple references.

Editing an embedded or share embedded document is much like editing a linked document. However, an embedded document must be edited from within QY CAD because it is not linked to any copy of the document that might exist on your hard disk. To edit the document from within QY CAD, use the Binder command on the Application menu when you point to Manage.