The Presentation Node

If you have added a custom presentation, you can generate a presentation tree based on the available templates as specified in the section (described below) by clicking (

). If the presentation tree is not empty, you will be asked if you want to replace the current tree.

	Any manual changes that you have made in the model tree, such as rearrangements of the section structure or settings adjustments will be lost if you confirm that you want to replace the current presentation tree.

Regenerating the presentation tree can be useful if you want to update the tree to reflect changes you have made in the model or if you want to change the presentation template without replacing the entire presentation.

Click the (

) or (

) button to show a preview of the presentation in the window. Click the button (

) in the toolbar for the Settings window for to create a PowerPoint presentation. The option is also available by right-clicking any node in the presentation tree. Selecting from any presentation node’s context menu generates the entire presentation.

This section, which is collapsed by default, contains the setting for the level of detail in new nodes that are added to the presentation manually. It also determines which nodes are added as well as their level of detail if you click (

) in the main node’s toolbar. The list takes its initial value from the template used to create the initial presentation contents. Alternatively, if you added an empty presentation, the default value is . The options available for selection include the values and as well as any custom presentation templates found in your user and installation presentation templates folders and in the current model (see Creating, Exporting, and Using Custom Presentation Templates).

In the field, specify a filename and path for the presentation, or click to specify the file to save the presentation to.

Select the check box if the software should ask for a filename if needed.

The check box is selected by default so that the presentation is opened when finished. Clear this check box if you do not want to see the presentation directly.

From the list, choose to use the template file specified in the dialog (see Edit the Default Presentation Settings) or the built-in template if no template has been specified. If you choose you can specify another PowerPoint template (*.potx file) in the field.

From the list, choose a level to which you want to include section header slides: , , (the default), or .

In the field, enter a value between 5 and 2000 to limit the number of rows per table (default: 500). This setting allows you to prevent generating presentations with possibly several hundred slides.

From the list, you can select the default image size for the presentation, which determines the fraction of the content placeholder’s width that the image occupies on the title and content slide: (35%), (42.5%), (50%), (57.5%), or (65%). All images have an aspect ratio of 4:3. The sizes of the generated image files are those for print-optimized output listed under Images in the The Report Node section

From the list, select the image file type: (the default) or .

	For the best image quality, use PNG images.

From the list, specify which color theme to use for the presentation: (the default), , , , , , , , , or .

From the list, choose which background to use for the presentation. , , (the default), or . If you chose , then specify a color using the color palette that become available.

There are three options for controlling image generation:

•

(default) — Report images are generated in accordance with the settings for the individual report features each time you write the report.

•

— Images are generated if they are not available. Use this option if you want to quickly rewrite the report to include changes that only affect the text.

•

— Images are not generated. This option can be useful, for example, when troubleshooting models with a very large number of nodes.

The generated presentations use three different slide layouts, all based on standard PowerPoint slide layouts. For a layout in a template to be valid it must satisfy certain criteria, which depend on the layout type:

The slide layouts must not contain any placeholders other than those listed above, not counting date and time, header, footer, and slide number placeholders, which are ignored.

If you try to choose a template file that does not contain at least one valid layout for each of the three slide layout types, you will get an error message stating which criterion or criteria were not fulfilled. If this happens, choose a different template or try to adjust your template in PowerPoint.

In the list you can choose how to handle title and content slides with an image on the right that contain no text except for the title and possibly a figure caption:

•

(the default) — The image will be centered horizontally within the slide’s content placeholder. For plot groups, the image size will also be scaled up to extra large.

•

— An empty text box will be added to the left of the image. To locate this text box, hover below the title field near the left edge of the slide and click when a text cursor appears if you want to add text manually.

	By default, text added in the Comments text area on the Properties page for a node reported on, will be shown on the left-hand side of the slide, each line generating a separate bullet. You can use this to make the presentations in your model self contained and reduce the need for subsequent editing in PowerPoint.

Using the controls in this section, you can customize how numbers are formatted in presentation table output. The available settings are:

•

— Numbers in presentation tables are displayed in the same way as numbers are displayed by default in the Table window in the COMSOL Desktop. In particular, the precision is then controlled by the setting on the page of the dialog.

•

— Choose this option if you want to customize number formatting for your presentation. You can then specify the as an integer between 1 and 15 (the default is the current preference setting); the , with the alternatives

For and notation, select the if you want to keep trailing zeros within the chosen precision.

Select the check box to right align table columns with purely numeric data.

You can override the presentation-wide number format settings for individual presentation feature nodes that generate table data. The window for such a presentation feature node contains a section where you can specify the as either (the default) or . The former option gives the number formatting defined in the corresponding section of the parent Presentation node, whereas the latter allows you to specify dedicated settings.

Open The Preferences Dialog Box and click to control some properties for the presentation generator.

•

If the refers to an existing directory, the default filename for a new presentation will be based on the model’s name. When the presentation directory is set in this way, a nonabsolute path in the text field in the section of the Presentation window will be interpreted as relative to this directory.

•

In the field, type the full path and filename to a Microsoft PowerPoint template (.potx-file) that you want to use as the default template for presentations. Click to browse to the file’s location. You can also use a Microsoft PowerPoint document (.pptx-file) as your default template.

•

From the list, you can select the default size for presentation images; choose between , , , , and . Similarly, use the list to specify the default type for the presentation images: or .