Automatically input data into tables.

[Anonymous]

Hi! First post here as a student!

I have a project that requires me to insert multiple data into an excel spreadsheet. 

Some are very simple, like a rectangle area. 

There is a lot of them and it would take me days to do them all. I wonder if there is a way to automatically input data into tables. Like line length, rectangle area, circle radius... 

It would be very useful!

Thank you.

[natasha.l]

Hello @Anonymous, 

You can use some of the features from AutoCAD Express Tools to accomplish this(make sure you installed it with AutoCAD). Commands ATTIN and ATTOUT. Put simply, the commands will export Block Attribute values to a Tab-Delimited text file (ATTOUT), and update Block Attribute values from a Tab-Delimited text file (ATTIN).

You can review this video for detailed information, where these commands are used to quickly re-number the room tags in a floor plan. 

Please "Accept Solution" if a reply or replies have helped resolve the issue or answered your question, to help others in the community.

[S.Faris]

You need to elaborate a little more on what exactly do you want. Post a sample file.

If there is a rectangle what all details you need? what if there are 100s of rectangles? how will you identify them from table and reference it back to the element in the drawing? I hope you get my point. Explain bit more and then we can help you 🙂

[ChicagoLooper]

You can kinda do it using DATAEXTRACTION command. Annotate tab>Tables panel>Extract Data icon. This command will run through a Wizard and will look at the Properties (by properties I mean the 'stuff' that appears in the Properties Palette when you click on an entity) of the items you choose and will put them in an external file, e.g. xls, csv, or txt. It will also give you the option to put the extraction in a Table that you can place in your drawing.

I say kinda because when you're done extracting the data you may have a several columns with data. Depending on the parameters you specify in the Wizard, your column headings could be, but not limited to, area, length, and radius. If your final output is a spreadsheet, there would be no way of knowing what entities are associated with a particular cell value, hence DataExtraction can kinda do it. Example: The radius 10.25 appears 7 times in the spreadsheet. Which 7 of the 252 circles has this radius? The area of a square is 7.328 sq.in., which square out of 147 squares is it?

If you had block with attributes, where the attribute serves as an ID, e.g. circ-1, circ-2, square-101, square-A002, line-Moe, line-Larry, line-Curley, then you could have column-1 titled 'ID' and columns 2, 3 and 4 titled Area, Length, and Radius, respectively. The DataExtraction procedure would fill in the appropriate columns based on the properties associated with that type of entity.

If you had Map 3D (Civil 3D), you'd have more horsepower, way more, and you could do it with know-how and turn the extracted data into Object Data. How you use Map 3D and OD to do what you need, however, is an entirely different post.