Copy/paste bearings and distances from Excel to command line

[jporter]

Ok, I realize that I'm probably spitting into the wind here but here it goes. . .

I'm in the process of assisting a company make the move from Land Desktop to Civil 3D.  Yes, finally making the move.  They have a user who's primary role is parcel and boundary closures.  

He types up all his bearings and distances for his linework in an Excel spreadsheet, then, in Land Desktop, he would use the draw lines by bearings and distances command and copy and paste the contents of the spreadsheet at the command line and it would draw the linework for him.  I tested one of his spreadsheets and tried to bring it into Civil 3D using the draw line by bearing command.  I can copy and paste from the spreadsheet one line at a time to get it to work, but in Land Desktop he would copy and paste the entire spreadsheet.  I have not found a way to do this in Civil 3D.  Is it even possible? 

I've attached an example of a bogus spreadsheet for you if you want to test it out.  

Thanks for any input,

[odoshi]

I'm not sure if the prompts have changed from Land Desktop to Civil 3D, but that could break it.

Also, depending how the Excel data gets on the clipboard, it might not be in the right format when pasted. This could be due to a Windows/MS Office change.

Those are just 2 things that I could see going wrong.

I would save it out as a space delimited file and try turning it into an AutoCAD Script file (.scr).

[jmayo-EE]

Unless the spreadsheet is performing other tasks like closure coreection I would bet that the time to input the lines directly into C3D is shorter than using two programs.

[jporter]

Jmayo,

I agree with on this one small file. However, the user commonly has many lines to input (50+ on average).

Jason Porter
Sent from my iPhone

[jporter]

Figured it out:

http://asti.com/News-Events/blogs/PostId/2159/map-3dcivil-3d-copy-and-paste-lot-lines-from-excel

[_Hathaway]

Interesting, i have never heard of this type of input for brgs and distance.  I used to enter thousands of these weekly and always simply read the source material and entered the data into Civil3d.  I think a cut and paste method would be more tedious.

[jporter]

@_Hathaway, I agree with you.  However, one of my clients is provided a list of bearings and distances in Excel format from his client and in Land Desktop he used to simply copy and paste at the command line.  This was his reason for not moving forward to Civil 3D.  Now there should be no excuse.  

[jmayo-EE]

Nice follow up and thanks for the link. Nifty trick but if they type it into excel I don't see how time is saved. You need to do more keyboard input in excel getting the 'bd for each line and tabing through the spaces or adding them after. In C3D you type 'bd only once and the space is a slap of the thumb for Enter. The rest of the keyboard entry is the same. Just more time opening 2 programs and copying/pasting. Now if someone else sent the excel file or if it was automatically generated somehow the trick would save a bunch of time.

[doni49]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@_Hathaway, I agree with you.  However, one of my clients is provided a list of bearings and distances in Excel format from his client and in Land Desktop he used to simply copy and paste at the command line.  This was his reason for not moving forward to Civil 3D.  Now there should be no excuse.  

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If he's receiving the B&D data in excel format, then copy/paste would be best.  But in the beginning, you talked about typing them into Excel so that he could then copy/paste to C3D -- that part wouldn't make any sense to me.

[jporter]

Oh, @jmayo-EE, I agree.  It's a lot of work to hand type.  All my client does is add the 'bd in one column and then drag the column down to copy into the rest of the cells. So in his world he'll only have to add 3 columns and two of them are blank.  

[jporter]

@_Hathaway, apologies.  After some long discussions with the client as to why he'd spend so much time typing when it's much easier to simply use the Civil 3D transparent command he revealed to me that he's not always typing in the data.  It's a 50/50 split for him on his process.  

[rl_jackson]

I think it would be more useful to do this at the Survey Command Line. BD is still a valid command and it could draw the lines at the same time.

And then there the option of just exporting the xls to a space delimited text file that could be saved as a FBK file, with this same command language, import it into a database and whamo!!!!!

[Joe-Bouza]

And I was just going to say it should be scripted.

[tcorey]

Without arguing the merits of typing bearings and distances into Excel or into Civil 3D directly, I do want to say thanks for posting that cool solution. 

Data from clients is like Forest Gump's box of chocolates....You never know what you're going to get. 

[jporter]

@tcorey, thank you.  You're exactly right.  Just when you think you've seen it all . . . .