Populating Specs Data in Excel to AutoCAD and MicroStation

[JaredLee]

I am a Piping Designer and in many times I have to do the following repeated works:

We have 11x17 Piping ISO drawings in AutoCAD or MicroStation. Most of the time the drawing number is over 100, some time is more than 1000. In each drawing there is a shcedule imcorporated pipe line's specification data, including length, spec, insulation thickness, pressure etc.

Meanwhile, I also have to prepare exactly same pipe line's specification data in Excel. We call it LDT (Line Data Table).

We have to key in the same data twice (CAD and Excel). It takes us hundreds of hour to open 1000 drawings and change text in these drawings. After that the checkers also spend lots of time to check it. They open 1000 drawings and check it against Excel spreadsheet.

There are more headaches when the revisions coming in. In many time designer changes one place and forget to change another (CAD or Excel), which caused many inconsistencies in our work.

My question is:

Is there a good way, some add-ons to AutoCAD and MicroStation, for us to populate our LDT in Excel into 1000 drawings and maintain a link between CAD and Excel, so that for any revision we only need to change one place and the other will get updated.

 

[FacilitiesCAD]

Well this won't answer your question but it is a start. You may want to ask this question in the Autocad forum.

Anyhow,

In Autocad there is a concept of blocks and you can put attributes to those blocks. You can then use 'attext' to extract that data into a coma deliminated file. This you can bring over to excell. I believe there are even better ways if you ask in the Autocad forum (Or look for similiar messages)

 

[okeng]

I've had the same problem but on a much smaller scale which enables me to just input the data twice. If you're dealing with thousands of files, though, it would pay to find a solution.

Microstation has the ability to "link" an excel file. I've just messed around with it a little and it seems to work after a fashion. If you go to your excel file and do a "copy", then go into your microstation file and do a "paste special", there will be an option to paste a "linked microsoft excel worksheet". One obvious problem for me is that it seems to only want to put it in the TOP view orientation. I THINK that the file is then sort of like a reference file--it's not really in the cad file but only displayed. There are options for things like "update linked file" and so on.

If you can get this to work (we are talking microstation and microsoft), it may let you declare the excel file to be the control document and then you won't have to update the cad file.

Let me know if it works.

Jess Davis
jacec@pldi.net

 

[JaredLee]

Thanks for your advice okeng.

I got a follow up post here about Office2CAD at

http://www.cadtool.net

and tried it out there after. I couldn't find this post anymore and I think it get removed because of commercial purpose.

Anyway, we finally use Office2CAD and it do work for us.

Again, thanks for your advice

 

[NOEd]

You can execute a dynamic data link from Excel to Microstation that gives Excel macros access to the Microstation keyin box but that may not help. It allows you to easily upload lines and text into Microstation but I haven't been able to pull info back out. Here's a sample:

channel = Application.DDEInitiate("ustn", "keyin&quot

Application.DDEExecute channel, "Place Line"
For z = FRow To LRow
If Len(Cells(z, FCol)) = 0 Then 'start a new line
Application.DDEExecute channel, "Place Line"
Else
Application.DDEExecute channel, "XY= " & Cells(z, FCol) _
& "," & Cells(z, FCol + 1)
End If
Next
Application.DDETerminate channel

 

[jbart]

Hi JaredLee:

I have consistently preached using CADminer for issues like yours - especially when dealing with 100/0s of files.

CADminer is a CAD information-mining tool that we use to export CAD information to a spreadsheet. But it also has a relational database engine where you can go the "other way" - link/import info. from a spreadsheet and annotate your drawing near the selected entities. Better, it can do this automatically and dynamically - i.e., constant changes to the drawing as the external file changes. You can download a free trial from

http://www.cadminer.com.

Hope that helps.

 

[bltseattle]

The Spanner program can be used for importing Excel tables into AutoCAD drawings. It's easy to use. I think it has a mode that updates the drawing each time you open it. The CAD folks I've worked with have used it to import Summary of Quantity tables from an estimate into the contract drawings.

Here's a link:

http://www.wfcadtools.com/span40.htm

It looks like you can get a free demo...