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Participant
October 10, 2019
Question

Is there a way to auto populate image files into a template based on file name or location?

  • October 10, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 137 views

I'm using captivate to build 360 tours of several small apartments, and for the most part I'll be making a ton of modules that follow the exact same 3-room format.  There will be three 360 images for the rooms with hotpots that occur at more or less the same places for the same features.  My plan so far has been to create a master template with my hotspots pre-loaded so that I essentially upload 360 background images and then quickly place and assign pictures to each hotspot (sink closeup, shower closeup, etc.).  To make things easier, I was wondering if there were a way to create a master template that would automatically import images based on some property assigned to a file, like the file name.

 

An applied dream-example might look like this: I import the background images, but I can add a folder to the library with files named "sink.jpg" and "shower.jpg" and the hotspots automatically retrieve the files and import them to the correct spot.

 

Another possibility: I was talking to my dad the other day, who is a longtime newspaper IT guy, and he said they accomplished this since the early 90s with Quark Express using a linked folder, which would populate an object in a page with whatever was in the correct subfolder.  Like if you put a picture in a folder titled "front page," the picutre would autopopulate a blank space on the front page. 

 

Is there a way to achieve this with Captivate?  Thanks for your help.

 

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    2 replies

    chrismay_at_delta17095116
    Inspiring
    October 11, 2019

    Check out the new replace image feature in the latest version. If it works for 360 images...

    Make your master file with images and hotspots.

    Save AS

    Import new images and replace them.

    Publish

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 11, 2019

    Captivate 'remembers' the folder location of each image object you import into a CPTX project file, but it remembers that folder location as an absolute link that goes all the way back to the drive letter on your PC.  It does not remember the location as a relative link related to the location of the CPTX. 

     

    If you consistently name all images you will be using in these projects, and they all point back to the same image folder, then you could simply create the initial CPTX and import all of its images from that folder, then use Save As to create the other CPTX projects.  Then replace the images in that folder with new images that have exactly the same filenames, go to the Library in the CPTX, select all of the images, right click and choose Update.  The new images will then overwrite the older images, but only in that specific CPTX.  Then you can publish out from that CPTX.  The images in other CPTX files will not be changed unless you choose to do an update on them.  The images in their own Libraries will remain unchanged.

     

    That would be one way to do it.