Linking existing table to Excel sheet

[tokintmash]

44 minutes ago, SLW210 said:

To be honest, making the tables first my be wasted time, you could put them in Excel then make the tables and create the link just as easy.

I could be wrong as I don't know AutoCAD well, but my intention is to keep the BOM at the same location and same size as much as possible.

 

In my experience so far - when I create a new table based on Excel data, the new table won't have the same size and I have to come in and manually drag it to it's correct location, set the columns, font size etc. I am trying to avoid doing that. I haven't even found how can I set the font size to match the original.

 

It could also be that I approach this from a wrong angle entirely. I could use this opportunity and ask here - you guys, who obviously use AutoCAD every day - say you need translations for drawings and you must use translator's help. Would you expect the translation company to return the drawings with translated BOM and everything perfect? Or would you rather that the translation company has dealt with texts only and you deal with the layout yourself later? If there are 100+ files and you're in a hurry.

 

I ask this because I see that sometimes the BOM cannot be made any larger without moving other objects in the drawing, but with translated texts it cannot stay the same size either. So, maybe I am overthinking? Maybe it is inevitable that someone will have to manually go over the translated drawings?

 

I should also mention that my predecessor here left with all the knowledge, so I had to start learning from scratch. I know he had lisp scripts etc, but because his leaving was not the friendliest of all, I didn't inherit any of it. Now we're in a little awkward situation where our customers have certain expectations but we don't really know what those are and how did those translated DWGs look like.  

 

Edited August 28 by tokintmash

[BIGAL]

"In my experience so far - when I create a new table based on Excel data, the new table won't have the same size and I have to come in and manually drag it to it's correct location, set the columns, font size etc."

 

You can get info from EXCEL when you are in say Acad, like column width, text size, tow height. Its a case of getting a cell property. Its not something I have tried but may look at adding to my Excel functions. All you would need to do is say pick a point for new table.

 

(setq cell (vlax-get (vlax-variant-value  (vlax-get-property cells "Item" row column)) 'width))
70.8

(setq cell (vlax-get (vlax-variant-value  (vlax-get-property cells "Item" row column)) 'height))
14.4

 

[SLW210]

Can someone post a drawing with some of the text and line "tables" that were converted by the latest COT? (yea, it's bugging me.)

 

Can you give a detailed description of all the steps you need to do?

 

Are you updating several drawings with a single Excel file or many drawings with many Excel files?

 

 

[tokintmash]

6 minutes ago, SLW210 said:

Can someone post a drawing with some of the text and line "tables" that were converted by the latest COT? (yea, it's bugging me.)

 

Can you give a detailed description of all the steps you need to do?

 

Are you updating several drawings with a single Excel file or many drawings with many Excel files?

 

 

 

-Opened the block that contained the "not-real table"

-Loaded the app v 1.6

-Run the app

-Chose "Standard" for Select Table Style

-Chose "Yes" for suppress title/headers

-Selected all content inside the block + Enter

-Exploded the block

test-cot.dwg

[BIGAL]

Just a comment ran COT on a text table 500 rows 8 columns took like 10 minutes to convert, I use a different method of X&Y of the text it takes like a few seconds to make a list. But the text table is very consistent with only 1 column that may be blank. So it may mean other methods are more suited to convert text to tables.

[SLW210]

9 hours ago, BIGAL said:

Just a comment ran COT on a text table 500 rows 8 columns took like 10 minutes to convert, I use a different method of X&Y of the text it takes like a few seconds to make a list. But the text table is very consistent with only 1 column that may be blank. So it may mean other methods are more suited to convert text to tables.

And as I mentioned earlier, they all seem to be erratic in execution. I wouldn't be surprised if something of yours or fixo's would work better.

 

I was working on an Excel VBA to push a Table to AutoCAD, when I get back to work tomorrow I will give it a look, if the OP thinks that is a possible solution.

[BIGAL]

I did draw circle, pline and line from a Excel macro so yes could do a table.

 

It is probably easier to just read Excel cells and make a table using CAD. See code above for row and column details.

 

I use a defun by FIXO that allows you to select a range as you may not want all of the spreadsheet brought in.

 

Various functions in this.

 

Alan Excel library.lsp

 

If using Bricscad need different get application, so I have a Acad & Bricscad version.

Sub Opendwg()
 
    Dim acadApp As Object
    Dim acadDoc As Object

 'Check if CAD application is open. If is not opened create a new instance and make it visible.
    On Error Resume Next
    Set acadApp = GetObject(, "BricsCadApp.AcadApplication")
    If acadApp Is Nothing Then
        Set acadApp = CreateObject("BricsCadApp.AcadApplication")
        acadApp.Visible = True
    End If

 

draw object xl acad.xlsm

Edited September 2 by BIGAL