I’m sure someone else here mentioned recently that they could not find any software to do this, but I can’t find their post to reply to, so this is a new post.
Anyway, if you want make some proper old-school Clockwheels to print out, I’ve attached an Excel spreadsheet which lets you create and print your own. There’s a sample screenshot below. 8)
It’s basically a simple sheet with a pie chart on it, with a graphic of a clock face under it.
There is also a Big Green Arrow button, the purpose of which is to set each pie slice to the colour of the corresponding data cell. Or in other words: change the items in the list on the sheet (make sure they add up to 60 minutes!), then give each cell in the Item column a Fill Colour, then click the Big Green Button and the pie chart slices will match those colours.
Obviously as it’s just an Excel Chart object, you can easily change the fonts and font colours of the slices if you need to.
Note that you DO need to Enable Macros in Excel to use this. I wrote it in Excel 2003 so I presume (?) it will work with later versions (I don’t have any later versions here). I have no plans to write an OpenOffice Calc equivalent, but if someone fancies having a go at that, I’ve attached the clock face graphic for you in the ZIPfile.
IMPORTANT: If you add any sheets to the workbook, or copy/move the sheet into another workbook, the code will probably break. Clone the original file and save it with new file names if you need several different clockwheels.
Hope others find this useful; it was more of a ‘techie exercise’ for yours truly. ;D
Well it didn’t work so well here. It does load, ture: but the slice names didn’t convert properly, and clicking the button causes a fairly immediate crash in OO Basic (not a surprise, since it’s trying to run VBA). I daresay that changing the data list contents will work, but that’s about it. No ‘auto’ colouring of the slices, which was really the whole point of the Excel version. :-\
I can see that HotClock does have a few extra features, true, but my version IS free; and I daresay you could paste the chart which mine produces into a Word (or maybe Writer?) document to add the headings, boxes, etc.
Cad, just checked. Works for me in version 3 of OpenOffice. Slices adjust when you type in a new time into the box. The names also adjust if you change ads to stopset for instance. Though not been able to get the colours to change.
Hey cad,
didn’t you construct something that could read mAirList Playlists to modify them in Excel than write back?
It would be great if your clock tool could read Playlist files to print the clock.
Just an idea, but maybe not that easy.
Never the less your tool helps me a lot.
Regards
Malte
Exactly: changing the names, times, etc. should work in both Excel and OO. BUT: look at the screenshot from Excel. Excel shows the NAMES on the slices as well as the TIMES: OO does not, probably due to different capabilities/ways of specifying the slice labels. And the main ‘clever’ part of it—changing the slice colours to match the cell colours by clicking a button on the sheet—does NOT work in OO: again, this is due to differences between the two products which i personally simply don’t have time to fix in OO.
The only part not working for me is the slices changing colours in the pie chart. Changing the duration or name of a cell is reflected in the pie chart.
OK, I’ve done some research on the Excel 2007 issues reported here, and it seems that MS decided to integrate charting into OfficeArt (?!!) in 2007; there fore, most of the previously accessible-from-VBA features went down the toilet, including the ability to change the colour of a pie chart slice. >:(
You should (?) be able to manually change the slice colours. Perhaps. Dunno: I’ve never done charts in Excel 2007! I haven’t looked at how this (might?) work in Excel 2010.
Resurrecting an old thread, I’ve written a ClockWheel utility called ClockMaker. Beta 1 is available at the link below. It’s released for both Windows and Mac OS. Still some work to be done including tidying up the Windows version and also printing/displaying legends etc.
[quote=“Cad, post:17, topic:7218”]Is there a way to specify the clockwheel Title anywhere? No obvious way to do this unless I’m missing something.
Also, I think there should be black lines between each segment, at least as an option.
PS: I can give you a copy of the graphic from my own Excel clockwheel if you wish/need it?
PPS: I listened to 2NG earlier for about an hour: great mix of tracks!
BFN
Cad[/quote]
Thanks. When you add the first item it “should” pop up a dialog for the clockwheel name. It is also editable on a menu (If I remember right!). Yes, the black lines between segments is on my to-do list. The circle is generated dynamically and is resizable, so if you resize the window, it should adjust on the fly!
Just a quick update, I’ve uploaded a version that will expire in June (as it’s a beta). The previous one will conk out on Tuesday (1/1/13). I hopefully will add some bits to it but the feedback has been deafening but Cad’s suggestions are on my to-do list as they are good ones.
Richard: as I’ve been doing some heavy-duty Excel VBA at work recently, I’m pretty sure that you can’t colour pie slices in Excel 2007 (they’re not accessible in that VBA object model), but you can do that in Excel 2010 (and — hopefully — in later versions?).
Personally, I always use Record Macro first off, manually perform what I want the code to do, then tweak (usually, remove the extraneous dross from) the result and then copy/paste it into the rest of my Project’s code as needed. But no doubt I’m teaching granny to suck eggs! :
Clone the original file and save it with new file names if you need several different clockwheels.
