topic Re: Converting an excel table into an Autocad drawing in AutoCAD Forum

Converting an excel table into an Autocad drawing

Emma_Wassell — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 15:00:35 GMT

hello,

I am wondering if anyone has the answer to this predicament I am currently facing!

I want to convert my excel file into an automated excel drawing that I can publish to a laser cutter instantly, and i want to do his by having block links to the drawings I want to import and text links for the text boxes in these blocks, an then to have them automatically produce themselves layed out on a drawing that I can just turn into a suitable file so then all I need to worry about is setting up the laser cutting machine and pressing the print button, any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

I'm just curious to see if anyone else here has tried for the same thing and even better if you have managed to succeed, the most I have come close to is turning my block into an ATTOUT file to se how they were potentially laying out the data, or even better if I don't need to produce an actual drawing but have AutoCAD just read what I want to do and be able to produce it automatically into the laser cutter from pasting the table in!

Many Thanks

E.L.E.W

Re: Converting an excel table into an Autocad drawing

TheCADnoob — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 21:29:22 GMT

I'm not certain I fully understand what you are up to, but if i do, To do this well, it would probably be best to use lisp or VBA to set something up. With the good advice out of the way i can offer this bad advice haha; If you want to run roughshod you can use Excel to concate some strings together and dump those into a command line. This is an ugly way to do, but it works. In this example Im pulling from some techniques i used in a copy pasta tip as well as another Excel bit i did.

The big hang-up with your task is the need to use strings for block names and block input in the command line dump so it throws off the flow a little as you have to include line breaks which adds a step of having to remove some quotation marks.

In this spread sheet (attached below) i set the main page size, the text of two blocks, the blocks names and the blocks insertion points. Insert the values in the spread sheet, then copy the dump string into notepad (or equivalent) and remove the quotation marks. Copy from note pad and paste into AutoCAD command line. Note that adding or removing line breaks will sometimes leave AutoCAD trying to run another command. You can work to trim all those sort of things out as you refine it.

Re: Converting an excel table into an Autocad drawing

TerryDotson — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 22:45:36 GMT

If I understand your needs correctly, this Excel Add-In (ExcelDraw) may help you create AutoCAD objects from the data inside Excel.

Re: Converting an excel table into an Autocad drawing

Ed__Jobe — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 00:34:00 GMT

In my opinion, AutoCAD is the wrong software for this. I would use Inventor to draw a sketch and then use the spreadsheet as parameters for dimensions, etc. Then, Inventor has plugins that allow you to send the model to CNC machines. While you could use acad, you would have to reinvent the wheel.