TECHNICAL INFORMATION DOCUMENT

New Features in CBR

Last Revised 20.January.2003

Send us comments or questions regarding this document

This document covers some of the new features introduced as a part of the Windows California Bearing Ratio program.

• PDF File Export
• XML Files
• Windows Clipboard
• Screen Previewing

PDF (Adobe Acrobat) Reports

.PDF is a near-universal format for Internet document distribution. (Viewing requires the Adobe Reader program that may be downloaded at no charge from Adobe's web site.) CBR can export both its summary report and its chart report as .PDF files which can be e-mailed to clients or posted to a project web site.

XML File Exports

While .PDF files are handy for e-mailing to clients, if the client needs access to your raw testing data, .PDF can't help. CBR also exports raw data in a file format called XML: these files can be viewed by a web browser, and, more importantly, imported directly into a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel XP or newer).

XML files contain all of your raw testing data (e.g., wet, dry and tare weights for moisture contents, elapsed time and dial readings for soak tests, etc.) as well as the calculated test results (moisture contents, % swell, CBR values, etc.). Once imported into Excel, your clients can use their own Excel macros to manipulate and chart your CBR data.

You can also post these files to your project website alongside the sample's .PDF reports -- XML files are typically smaller and faster loading than the .PDF files and have a higher "information density". (If you have Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer, Mozilla 1.0 or newer, or Netscape 7.0 or newer, you can view a sample XML file here.)

Here at GEOSYSTEM we use CBR's XML files to verify the program's calculations: we have a set of exported CBR XML files for which we've hand-calculated all of the testing results (e.g., moisture content and density results, CBR values, etc.). These files are compared against newly-exported CBR data to make sure that the calculations are identical. (You can view a few of these XML test sets, along with our manual calculations, here.)

CBR and the Windows Clipboard

If you're creating a word processing document which incorporates your CBR reports, you can skip the process of exporting the report to a file then inserting the file as a picture into your word processing document: CBR allows you to directly copy your reports to the Windows clipboard.

This is useful because all word processors have a "Paste from clipboard" option: while you're editing a CBR test, simply select "Edit" > "Copy Data" then switch to your word processor and select "Edit" > "Paste"...you've just added a copy of that sample's CBR chart report to your document.

There's another use for the clipboard: if you are going to enter a new CBR test that is substantially similar to a CBR test you've already entered, you can use the already-entered test's data as a starting point for the new test. Simply open the CBR test you've already entered, select "Edit" > "Copy Data", close the CBR test then, after entering the new test's sample data, click on the CBR link and select "Edit" > "Paste Data".

Screen Previewing

CBR features several useful report preview facilities: after you've entered your data, clicking on the "Report" tab at the bottom of the data entry screen displays the chart report:

Note the magnifier, which can be handy for zooming in on test result boxes.

CBR reports can also be previewed from the Data Manager source folder screen. Right-click on the CBR link at the bottom of your sample's data entry card and select "Report Preview" from the popup menu and you get a display like this:

This feature makes it easy to quickly review all of the CBR reports generated for a project.