Overview of Workbook Designer
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the Workbook Designer feature.
How to Access the Workbook Designer
The most commonly used method for accessing Workbook Designer is through the Edit Design Data feature, which can be accessed by clicking on the Workbook Designer icon in the toolbar menu.
Another way to access Workbook Designer is through the Library or Project Specification Groups interfaces. In addition, Workbook Designer can be accessed through the Database Explorer (Toolbox Setup > Options > Utilities > Database Explorer), which is discussed in more detail in the Library Management section. The last method is to open it as a stand-alone application. The Workbook Designer executable file can be found in the Program Files/Microvellum/Toolbox directory and can be copied to another location or added to the Windows taskbar. This allows you to open saved files directly from the application.
- F = Factory Setup Variables
- L = Local Prompts & Products
- G = Global Variables
- M = Material Pointer Variables
- E = Edgeband Pointer Variables
- H = Hardware Variables
- D = Door Wizard Variables
- W = Project Wizard Variables
- S = Subassemblies & Prompts
- N = Nested Subassemblies & Prompts
If your Workbook Designer does not display ten workbooks, it may be because you have not yet loaded data into memory for products, subassemblies, or nested subassemblies. It is not necessary to have data loaded for products and subassemblies to work with project data. The purpose of this note is to explain the difference in the number of spreadsheets you may see.
Switch Between Workbooks
Once you open Workbook Designer a helpful feature to be aware of is the window feature on the navigation bar. The drop-down menu has different options to customize how you view the Workbook. Selecting Cascade will put the Workbooks back in order in the same cascade view that was present upon opening. Tile Vertical and Tile Horizontal will provide an option to view various Workbooks together in horizontal or vertical fashion. There is also an option for each Workbook variable to select to switch among them efficiently.
Name Manager
To access the Name Manger, you can either select the button on the navigation bar or through the View drop-down menu.
The Name Manger allows you to have quicker access to Defined Names. For example, if you want to see where a specific LookUpTable's location is, scroll down to the desired Name, click on it, and then select the Refers to bar at the bottom of the dialog box. The Name Manager will then take you to the row and column of that Defined Name in the Workbook.
Another helpful tool Name Manager possesses is the ability to see overlapping names. If you renamed something in your workbook and it has two defined names for that row, checking the box in the top left corner of the Name Manager will allow you to see this overlap. It is best practice to delete one and only have one Defined Name per row.
Workbook and Range Explorer
The Workbook Explorer is accessible through the View drop-down menu located in the top left corner. The primary function of the Workbook Explorer is to add an additional worksheet to a workbook, but you can also manage your workbooks here. It is okay to add a worksheet to a workbook, but do NOT delete the first five worksheets. They are designated Microvellum worksheets that the software looks to.
The Range Explorer is also accessible through the View drop-down menu located in the top left corner. This feature allows you to customize cells by highlighting with color, changing font, and alignment. Highlighting a section that is frequently worked on may help you locate it easier and more efficiently.
How to Copy and Paste Variables
In a scenario where you want to copy Globals or other variables from a different or older library and paste them to a new one, it is important you take specific steps to ensure that Microvellum recognizes the changes in the workbooks.
1. Copy the desired Global Variables from the other/older library.
2. Paste them to the bottom of the worksheet in the new library.
The variables will be visible in the worksheet but will not be defined. You must insert them as a defined name for them to be a proper Microvellum Global variable otherwise they will not be recognized.
3. Next, highlight the name and the value of the variable and select Insert from the top left drop-down menu.
4. Find the Defined Name option in the menu and select From Selection. A dialog box will appear to select an option to Create Names from Selection. Leave as Left Column.
5. The highlighted cells will now be instantly defined, and you can see the change take place in the top left drop down menu for defined names. It is a good practice to check for overlapping names in the Name Manager after adding variables to your worksheets.