VTFX Plug-in for Office Applications and Webbrowser

As an addition to Tosca Structure.view, Ceetron company provides a plug-in for Microsoft PowerPoint®, Microsoft Word® and Microsoft Internet Explorer® that displays VTFX files in presentations and internet pages. The user cannot only animate the displayed model but also move it, turn it and zoom.

Prerequisites and Installation

The plug-in is not included in the SIMULIA Tosca Structure installation package and must be installed separately on each computer. It is realized as an ActiveX component that can be embedded in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document or html file. The plug-in loads a VTFX file generated by SIMULIA Tosca Structure and provides means for user interaction with the sequence of models saved in the file.

The plug-in is compatible with the following software:

  • Microsoft Windows® XP / Vista / 7
  • Microsoft Office® 2007 and above (for Office® 2010 only 32bit versions are supported!)
  • Internet Explorer®, Firefox® or Chrome®

For the operation of the plug-in, a graphic card that supports OpenGL (including actual driver software) is required.

The plug-in can be downloaded directly from Ceetron (http://www.ceetron.com).

Embedding the Plug-in Into PowerPoint®

In order to insert a plug-in into a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation, do the following:

  • Create a new slide in Microsoft PowerPoint®.
  • Select the tab GLview 3DPlugin and click Insert..

The plug-in should now look like this:

The vtfx file to be loaded in the plug-in can be easily specified as follows:

  • Select the plug-in by clicking on it.
  • Click Load VTFx in the Add-in (tab GLview 3DPlugin).
  • Select the VTFx (or VTF) file you want to use in the resulting dialog and click Open.
  • Now, if you view the slide show in presentation mode, the plug-in will open the VTFx file immediately when the slide containing the plug-in appears.

An alternative way to steps 5 and 6 is to open the properties window of the toolbar from the context menu and to edit the entries there. In this window, the property SWRENDERING can also be set to ON (default is OFF) in order to turn on the software rendering (otherwise the hardware OpenGL acceleration is used).

The VTFX file is loaded when the slide of the presentation is shown for the first time. After that, returning to the slide from another one or even the restart of the presentation (but not of Microsoft PowerPoint) does not cause the file to be reloaded.

Opening VTFX Files Using VBA Scripts

Using a simple VBA script, the user gains full control of the loading of a VTFX file in the plug-in. As an example, a button in the presentation can be created such that a certain file is loaded when the button is pressed. This behavior is needed if the loading time of a VTFX file is large so that the user might wish to skip it, or if different files are to be shown in the same plug-in (e.g., by clicking a button that corresponds to each file).

In order to create a button that opens a VTFX file, first insert the plug-in as described in actions 1-3 above. Then, continue as follows:

  • To add a button, select Command Button from the Control Toolbox in the Developer tab, and drag a button into the slide.


The button will look something like this:
  • Double click the button (or right-click and select View Code) to edit its <button name>_Click method in Microsoft Visual Basic editor (the code which handles the click of the button).
  • Add a codeline that calls the Open() method of the plug-in as follows (replace the argument test.vtfx with your VTFX file name):
  •  Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
   GLview3DPlugIn1.Open ("test.vtfx")
 End Sub
  • Select the menu command File | Close and Return to Microsoft PowerPoint.
  • Now, the VTFX file will be loaded once the presentation is started and the button on the slide is clicked. Note that the file is loaded only once; it unloads when Microsoft PowerPoint is exited.
Important: Please note that advanced usage of the plug-in using VBA scripts requires the use of Macros – for this reason, PowerPoint presentations have to be saved as «PowerPoint Macro-Enabled presentation (*.pptm)» files!

Integrating VTFX Files in Internet Pages

The GLview 3D plug-in can be embedded in a HTML web page and then be displayed in Microsoft Internet Explorer®. Note that the plug-in is not compatible with other web browsers. The plug-in is defined using object tag, and the VTFX file name as well as the information if the tool bar is to be shown and the software rendering is to be used are supplied using param tags:

<!-- Insert GLview 3D Plug-in -->

<object
 id="GLview3DPlugIn"
 classid="clsid:D37577A1-960C-11D5-A482-006094EB12E8"
 codebase="http://ceetron.com/plugins/   
 GLv3DPlugIn.cab#version=7,3,0"
 type="application/x-oleobject"
 width="900"
 height="600" >
 <param name="FileURL" value="model.vtfx">
 <param name="TOOLBAR" value="ON">
 <param name="SWRENDERING" value="OFF">
</object>

The plug-in is identified by classid. If the plug-in is not found locally on the computer, it is loaded from the link given by codebase parameter. In this manner, internet pages with embedded VTFX files can be made available for interested external persons.

The plug-in offers no possibility to change the display mode of a part. Furthermore, no groups can be selected interactively. Therefore, in particular the VTFX files containing topo_mat, shape_ctrl and bead_disp information are recommended for integration in web pages and presentations.