## Creating Custom Reports

Custom Reporting, added to version 4.2, provides a flexible and easy-to-use approach to reporting your measurement results. You will find this most useful when you need to generate a report quickly and simply for a specific part program, but you don't need the power available to the template-based approach. Since it does not use any report template, and instead utilizes your current part program's data directly, Custom Reports are generally easier to create and customize, but they lack the power and scope of template reporting.

Advantages of Custom Reporting:

- Data can be placed anywhere on the page and in any order.

- Data from multiple commands can be combined as a single element on the report.

- The reports are generated by a fast and simple unique drag-and-drop method.

- The report editor uses the actual data from the part program, not the dummy data. This makes customizing the report much simpler.

Disadvantages of Custom Reporting:

- You are creating a single report, not a template, and this report is tied to your part program. While you can import the structure of the report to use with other part programs, the reusability is not as great as with report templates designed with specific rules.

- It isn't as extensible as template reporting. Suppose you add a new feature or dimension later to your part program. For it to show up, you will need to drag and drop the new item into your report editor.

The following topics provide you with a tutorial that walks you through how to create, view, and print your first custom report. Procedural topics will also be provided for quick access should you need them later.

More:

Tutorial - Creating a Custom Report

Custom Report Generation

Dragging and Dropping Information into a Custom Report

Positioning Report Objects

Using Rules

Working with Multiple Pages

Viewing and Printing Custom Reports

Deleting Custom Reports

Using a Custom Report from another Part Program