Using Advanced Options

You can use the advanced options to increase the performance of the Excel adapter.

See Also
About the Excel Adapter
Mapping Between Parameters and Cells
Running Excel Macros
Setting Execution Permissions
  1. From the Applications section of the action bar, click Excel and drop it on the process diagram.
  2. Double-click Excel .
    The Excel Editor appears.
  3. From the Excel Editor, click the Advanced tab.
  4. Configure the Workbook Options for closing the workbook:
    OptionDescription
    After job completion

    Closes the Excel workbook when the entire process completes. Automation Process Composer opens Excel once and reuses it to evaluate each run of the adapter. Starting Excel only once avoids startup delays while the process runs.

    This option disables automatic recalculation of cells that contain formulas while cells that the formula depends on are being updated with input parameters from the activity. When activity parameters are being mapped to cells in the Excel sheet, auto-calculate is not needed and therefore disabled to improve performance.

    If the Excel adapter is part of a subflow running in parallel, these runs use this single Excel process and will run sequentially, reducing the potential performance gains from parallel execution. For rapid Excel workbook evaluations, decreases in performance are minimal. In a 3DOrchestrate environment, you can avoid sequential execution of the Excel adapter by dispatching different subflow runs to different stations.

    This option also minimizes the number of download operations. If your simulation process includes iterations over the Excel adapter, the performance of the workflow is increased as an Excel file from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform downloads during the first iteration and is used for all subsequent iterations.

    After Each iteration

    Closes the Excel workbook after each iteration of the Excel adapter. If you select this option, Excel may run numerous times during a single job, depending on the process configuration. If your simulation process includes iterations over the Excel adapter, the Excel file from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform platform is downloaded for each Excel iteration.

    This option disables automatic recalculation of cells that contain formulas while cells that the formula depends on are being updated with input parameters from the activity. When activity parameters are being mapped to cells in the Excel sheet, auto-calculate is not needed and therefore disabled to improve performance.
  5. Configure the Excel Submission options:
    OptionDescription
    Show Excel during execution Keeps Excel open visible when you run your simulation process.
    Re-use open workbook of same name Uses the same workbook that was open for a previous Excel adapter in the model. This option allows you to modify or extract data from the same workbook. If this option is not selected, each adapter opens its own copy of the workbook.
    Use a dedicated Excel process Starts a separate Excel process and dedicates it to this instance. By default, the Excel adapter shares a single Excel application process among all instances of an Excel adapter, whether they are in the same model or different models.
  6. Optional: Select Save Excel file after execution to save any changes that are made to the Excel file while the simulation process was running.
  7. Click Ok to save your changes and close the Excel Editor.