Projected Areas for multiple views into excel

Interesting problem for a Sunday evening. 🙂

I setup an assembly that had a surface for the shadow analysis in it.  Then placed a offset CSYS from that and set some parameters to drive the X, Y, X angles for it.

Then I assembled my model to the offset CSYS in the assembly and setup the shadow analysis (saving the analysis). (make sure the surface is big enough to capture the results).

Once that was setup - I recorded a mapkey to open up the saved shadow analysis and export the data to a text file in a sub-directory. (more on that in a sec).

THEN -- I used Nitro-CELL... (you can download and use it for free with the link) -- including the workbook and models for you to look at and run if you want a closer look.

I used Nitro-CELL to setup a "batch" process for all the rotations I was interested in. 

The batch sheet will loop through each variation and force another worksheet to execute with the operations (genShadow):

As you can see - this sets the rotation parameters values for the assembly offset CSYS (as defined by the active running batch item - excel formula referenced the values) - then regenerates the model.

Then it fixes the mapkey I added into excel to update the file name for the data export (row number in the batch sheet) - and then executes the mapkey to extract the shadow data to a named text file within in a sub-directory (ShadowDataFiles) 

Then I used Excel Power Query to import all the shadow data files in the sub-directory in one call, then transformed them with Power Query into the final results that are written back to an Excel Worksheet - "finalImportedShadowFiles":

Setting up the Excel Power Query read of files is not hard - but the directory name in the file may be different than the file I am including -- so be aware of that if you are not seeing it update.

Once the automation is finished batching - as a final step in the automation, the "startProcess" worksheet "REFRESHES" ALL of the data connections in Excel so that Power Query imports all the latest fies, merges them and reports them as a table back to the "finalImportedShadowFiles" Worksheet.  (kind of a workflow automation in Excel that is standard functionality).

With just a big bit more work, you could merge the shadow data with the batch data and get a super clean report of all your areas and ratios.

Attached is the reference file for you to check out.  Hope this helpful and inspirational.  It was created in Creo 6.

Dave