Maintain Aspect Ratio of 2D Plot on Different Monitors ??

[monir]

Hello;

There's a good chance that some might have already posted this question
(including myself!), but I couldn't find any related threads in this forum
directly addressing the problem.

Suppose you've a 2D chart displaying the fuselage of an airplane nicely
proportional on the Full Screen of your desktop monitor.
You copy the w/b to your laptop (with the same XL 2003) and the display is
completely out of proportion because of the different aspect ratio of the
screen.

Q1: Instead of Full Screen display, would a Custom View help in maintaining
the aspect ratio of the 2D plot regardless of monitor size ??

Q2: Does XL 2007 provide options for specifying the physical dimensions of
the chart area and/or plot area ??

Your expert reply would be greatly appreciated.

Regards.

 

[Jon Peltier]

If you embed the chart in a worksheet, or retain the chart sheet but do not
scale it with the window frame (Tools > Options > Chart tab), you should be
able to reduce the distortion to the minimum amount due to factors other
than monitor size and aspect ratio.

A1: I don't know diddly about custom views.

A2: Excel 2007 provides nothing more for charts than previous versions,
except for an enhanced ability to apply gaudy formatting.

- Jon

 

[monir]

Jon;

Thank you kindly for your reply.
It still amazes me that Excel with all its sophitication and charting
capabilities doesn't provide options for specifying the physical dimensions
of the chart area and/or plot area. Such options are readily available in
almost all far less sophisticated packages!

Kind regards.

 

[Jon Peltier]

You can specify the dimensions of an embedded chart. Hold Shift while
selecting the chart, press Ctrl+1 (numeral one) to format it, and on the
Size tab, set the size you want.

You can also specify the dimensions of the chart area of a chart sheet.
Knowing what size paper it is set to print on, subtract the width of the
chart from the width of the paper, and use half of this for your left and
right margins, then repeat this with the chart and paper height to determine
top and bottom margins.

Specifying the height and width of the plot area is more problematic,
because Excel needs room for labels etc. Some wise engineer (and I'm not
using "wise" sarcastically here) decided not to trust the users to specify
the inner plot area size and allow sufficient margin for labels. Such
complicated higher level (that is sarcastic) mathematics and the thinking
process required to implement the algorithms are beyond the abilities of
many users I've encountered. If you can handle it, then you can also handle
VBA and set things up with a little code.

This page links to a simple utility with some code you an check out:
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/AlignCharts.html
and this is another utility which uses similar code:
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Zips/AlignChartDimensions.zip

- Jon

 

[monir]

Jon;

Thanks again. Will check out your links to see if the code can be modified
(or trigger some thoughts on how) to control the physical dimensions of the
plot area in excel.

Regards.