Extract Data from 40,000 drawings

Extract Data from 40,000 drawings

demmijb
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Extract Data from 40,000 drawings

demmijb
Community Visitor
Community Visitor

I am trying to build a data extraction template that will be used to process extraction on over 40,000 drawings. My desired plan is to use powershell to loop through the drawings (all in the same folder) and run accoreconsole and pass in the values via an autocad script (.scr) to export the data. I mostly need text items that are almost always located in a table in the bottom right corner of the document. One caveat is that there is not a single standard (there are a few different versions at least). So, one problem I am running into is when I build the dataextraction template (.dxex). I select the folder and then it loads all of the files. From there I am to select the various options, it's at that point it crashes while trying to apply all of the options to the full list of drawings (the "updating table" step, page 4 of 8 on the extract wizard)

1. Is there a simple way to build a template to just extract "everything" from "every drawing in a folder"?

2. Is there a better approach to this entire endeavor?

3. I am not opposed to calling acad.exe via powershell, instead of accoreconsole but the problem - I think - is the same, I still need a dxex that will be used for all documents, right? 
4. Is there a way to "build" a dxex externally from the wizard?

 

Both of the methods below work with a single drawing loaded in the extraction template. The problem is trying to build a template for "all drawings"

here is an example of the accoreconsole.exe method, for a single drawing, called from powershell

$acc = "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2026\accoreconsole.exe"
$dwg = "E:\Docs\DWG\mydrawing.DWG"
$scr = "E:\Docs\Extract\Scripts\extract.scr"

& $acc /i $dwg /s $scr /l en-US



here is an example of the acad.exe method, ,for a single drawing, called from powershell

$acad = "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2026\acad.exe"
$dwg = "E:\Docs\DWG\mydrawing.DWG"
$scr = "E:\Docs\Extract\Scripts\dx_test.scr"

Start-Process -FilePath $acad -ArgumentList @(
"/nologo",
"/b", "`"$scr`"",
"`"$dwg`""
) -Wait

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Message 2 of 3

Tomislav.Golubovic
Advisor
Advisor

Are all 40000 drawings in that one folder? If so, what happens if you only make it the first 5000? Maybe you're hitting some limit with the Data Extraction Wizard?

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Message 3 of 3

rosie_lucas1
Autodesk
Autodesk

Hi @demmijb 

 

I just wanted to check in and see if you’ve had a chance to look at the follow-up questions from @Tomislav.Golubovic . Do you still need help, or have you already found a solution? If you have any relevant screenshots or screen recordings, please share them so the community can assist you further. 

 

Best Regards, 

 

Rosie | Community Manager 

Rosie | Community Manager
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