Is there a logical limit as to the number of elements in a wmf that can be selected at one time, or a file size limit?  We're seeing Metafile Companion locking up with large wmf files (like 1mb) when trying to select all the elements.  If we select a portion at a time, we can make it work without freezing.  However, since we're specifically using it to recolor wmf files (something we lost the ability to do with Office 2007, specifically in PowerPoint), the abiltiy to select simlar items based on color with the intent to change to a different color is very important to us.  And this we cannot do piecemeal.

 Hi Michael,

There is no specific limit to the number of items selected or to the file size, but there could be practical limits based on the amount of available memory and the Microsoft Foundation Class library that we use. I would say that a 1 MB metafile usually indicates that the program that generated the file was not very efficient. Well-generated metafiles rarely get that large. 

I recommend trying this with the latest version of Metafile Companion (currently v1.2) if you haven't already. If this is still a problem with v1.2, please zip up and email the file to Support@CompanionSoftware.com and we can look into it further.

Thanks!

Larry

Thank you for sending the problem file to me. Looking at it in the debugger, I see that the metafile contains 69394 objects. My suspicion is that this number is larger than the largest 16-bit number (65535) and that this is causing a problem in the list class in the Microsoft library code (or perhaps somewhere within Metafile Companion). I do not see any obvious problem in the Metafile Companion code, so I can't come up with a quick fix. So for now, I would have to say that Metafile Companion cannot select all the elements in a file with this many objects.

Just to be clear on the "efficient metafile generation" issue... A metafile generation program can draw a curve with 1000 two-point line segments or it can draw it with one polyline with 1001 points. The first method would generate 1000 objects for a "single" curve. The second method would generate just one object. This is a huge difference to editors such as Metafile Companion. So you might see if the file could be generated more efficiently. Then it could be easily edited in Metafile Companion.

I hope this helps...

Larry

The files we are using are being generated by an export function from AutoCAD 2002 and I really have no control over the optimzation of such.