linking single cells to AutoCAD LT

[RDK]

I use AutoCAD 2002 LT.

I am preparing a residential sub division plan and during the design development, most of the numbers on the drawing will be modified several times.

Examples are lot and building elevations. Every residential lot will have building elevations, corner and mid lot line elevations. For adjacent lots the corner and mid lot elevations will be the same along the common boundary. There are other relationships between the lots, for example adjacent building elevations are related and governed by the slope of the street.

I calculate these elevations in an excel spreadsheet. That part is not a problem. What I want to be able to do is automatically update the numbers on the drawings when I change the design. I will be trying several different combinations of street slopes and drainage layouts to determine the best fit. I can change these numbers on the spreadsheet automatically, just not on the drawing. In the past I have entered these values by hand and spent many hours checking only to discover errors in the transcription after checking.

I downloaded a demo copy of xl2cad from

http://www.dotsoft.com

but cannot enter a single cell value or update it automatically.

Is what I want to do possible with this product?

Is there a different product that will do this?





Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[cadkid]

I realy have'nt delt much with Acad lt, but I am guessing that OLE is one thing that lt shares with acad. And to answer your question yes you can link an individual cell to your drawing. Simply highlight the cell you wish to paste into the drawing, right click and select copy. Open the drawing select edit paste special and select Microsoft excel worksheet, make sure that the paste link radio button is selected. and hit OK. Do this for as many cells you need added and place them where ever you need them in the drawing. Now when you update the spread sheet it will be reflected in your drawing.

 

[VMichl]

You can try Excellink LT from

http://www.xanadu.cz/excellink

- it will autoupdate your AutoCAD attribute data.

Vladimir Michl

 

[mstg007]

any luck with this product/

 

[RDK]

I did not have any luck with the xl2cad product but I did work with the native OLE capabilities in AutoCAD and got the results I wanted.

For some reason I had a lot of trouble with layer control in viewports. When I used the vplayer command to turn off layers with ole objects that I did not want shown in the viewport I could not select the objects. I had to redo all the OLE insertions onto a separate layer and type the layer name into the vplayer dialogue.

I also had a lot of trouble formatting the display/printout. I had one viewport rotated 90 degrees to the model and could not get the ole objects to print out. I opened the excel spreadsheet and turned the text in the cells 90 degrees and resized all ole objects and was able to get something that worked.

However in the on screen display the text in the OLE boxes is upside down, on the page the objects are right side up.





Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com