AutoCAD - DWG to Hourly Analyst Package (HAP)

[LDShaw]

This may be a little confusing so bear with me. I've tried this several ways but I keep getting mired in problems. 

This may be multi posted thread before I can convey what I am trying to do but if anyone is familiar with  HAP (Hourly Analyst Package) you understand what I need. 

What I need to do is pull out room information by wall from the dwg and put it into another program that reads excel.
Here is an example a single wall. 

157 TRAINING
(E) WALL    44*19 =   970
WINDOW    2*7*8 =   112
DOOR    1*7.125*3.125 =   23

broken down it's

room 157 training.
1 east facing wall (always.) 
that has
2 windows 7' tall and 8' wide.
1 door 7'3 tall and 3'3 wide.
That will will look something like this when entered.


I've tried fields in both tables and blocks. The blocks don't seem to update and tables give me 1 sheet per wall when I want all walls in one excel sheet. 

I don't mind doing a little lisp but nothing seems to work from one end to the other. 

Below is an example of a dwg and a few things I've tried. 
The blocks with fields seem to be my best bet but they don't update correctly. 

[ The subject line of this post has been edited to include the product name by @handjonathan ]

[pendean]

Plain AutoCAD does not have "walls" for example: where are you getting the information needed for your chart, you only have random lines and plines everywhere in the DWG file (aka there is no intelligence to it)?

[LDShaw]

That is right. I have to gather the information by hand. By standard we put our results on the plan view as a text file. We then put all the information we gather into an excel file by hand. Once it's into the excel spreadsheet we put it in HAP wall by wall. I am trying to remove some of these manual steps. ideally I would like a block that has attributes. That do everything. This way I can gather them and sort them the way I want.

Example of
157 TRAINING
(E) WALL 44*19 = 970 (length*width)
WINDOW 2*7*8 = 112 (number of same windows*length*width)
DOOR 1*7.125*3.125 = 23 (number of same doors*length*width)
HAP will not let a wall have more than 1 door type. When that happens we split the wall. We can have up to 3 window types in one wall.

Note I can do all this with a block and attribs except the totals. When I try to add those via a field it reads the original block and totals those.

[JTBWorld]

I would recommend you to look at AutoCAD Architecture. Or you can contact us for custom development, see link below. 

[LDShaw]

Sorry for opening an old thread. This has been a problem for many years. I work on it in my spare time.

We are a mechanical shop and not the architect. Most of the times we don't get to choose the architects software for them we deal with whatever they use. Since we are pretty well an Autodesk shop it's typically a flavor of autodesk but not always. The architect does not care about our pain. When we are sizing things we xref the dwg in and work in our own file so when the arch changes things (and they will.) we don't have to redo all our work, just the parts that changed. When those changes do happen (a month or two later.) it's a pain to have to redo and make sure we've not missed or mis-typed anything. If I can pull out an excel sheet from the dwg the sanity checks become just that much easier. 

[LDShaw · Accepted solution]

I think I've found my answer. Thanks goes out to Lee_Mac he once again saved me. 
His Areap command does pretty much what I am asking for. It allows me to create a block for each wall with attributes I can fill out by hand or with closed shapes. Once done I can export to an excel spreadsheet saving me several steps.