Need help, Label list of circle points

[dtmcnamara]

Hey everyone. So I have been working on a massive Excel sheet for my company that helps our engineers convert our GCP points from our EMLID units from LAT/LONG to UTM coordinates, in order to overlay on our aerial maps. Once converted the excel sheet then converts everything to feet, you know cause we are in the US and the engineers here cannot do anything in M, and creates a formula to draw a ton of circle points in AutoCAD similar to the formula below:

C 1664227.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 3
C 1664235.39326967,-30727069.0852844,788.227787496847 3
C 1664240.6242518,-30727096.8635664,785.816058996201 3
C 1664246.99403913,-30727130.2328622,782.995833330201 3

My next step has been to try and label everything for them with a text box to the right of the circles, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do this. I'm trying to build it into my excel code so they can just copy a long string and it will do it all for them. Any help would be grateful.

here is an example line from the excel sheet now

Decimal Degrees	Meters		UTM (Feet)
Latitude	Longitude	Height		Label	East (X)	North (Y)	Height (Z)		Import Formula for AutoCAD
-84.3355687	33.65853235	241.2872679		Label 1	1664227.8168781	-30727025.6231642	791.6248945		C 1664227.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 3
-84.3356871	33.65875565	240.2518296		Label 2	1664235.3932697	-30727069.0852844	788.2277875		C 1664235.39326967,-30727069.0852844,788.227787496847 3
-84.3357627	33.65890913	239.5167348		Label 3	1664240.6242518	-30727096.8635664	785.8160590		C 1664240.6242518,-30727096.8635664,785.816058996201 3
-84.3358536	33.65909587	238.65713		Label 4	1664246.9940391	-30727130.2328622	782.9958333		C 1664246.99403913,-30727130.2328622,782.995833330201 3

[john.vellek]

Hi @dtmcnamara,

This looks like a worthy but ambitious task! Have you considered defining a block for each of the points that has an attribute for the point label? You could then use the Concatenate function in Excel to insert the block at the correct location and then edit the attribute.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[dtmcnamara]

Im open to all options right now. The worst thing about all of this is that I am not an avid AutoCAD user at all, so I dont know the ins and outs of what I can or cannot do. I remembered my circle command from my Autocad 2000 days in school, but other than that I can literally going off information I have found googling over the last few days

[dtmcnamara]

My thought process right now as to do the following

Take the initial point:

C 1664227.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 2

Then offset the X,Y coordinates a little to where I would like the text, say +5 in the x direction (this would also be built into the excel code to the user could set this manually if needed):

1664232.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797

Then run a command like this but for every point

TEXT 1664232.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 3 0 Elevation=791.624894540797 ft

This would make a label to the right 5 units with a text height of 3, with no rotation of the text and it would say "

Elevation=791.624894540797 ft". The only issue is after the code I need to hit enter twice in order to go to the next point and I cannot figure out how to do this inside excel.

[ChicagoLooper]

Engineers? Lat/Long? UTM?

Surely, someone in your firm must have Civil 3D or Map 3D. Plain vanilla Cad is not suited for this like C3D/M3D, both of which will do this standing on it's head regardless how 'massive' your spreadsheet.  

[dtmcnamara]

After stringing everything together it seem like i get held up at the actual Text Input every time. It will place the blinking cursor where the text needs to start but will not pull in my text that I need for it.

TEXT 1664232.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 3 0 Elevation=791.624894540797ft

Any suggestions? Is there a certain way I need to have the text enter autocad when using command line or is it just not possible to string together something like this just line by line like I am trying?

[Ed__Jobe]

The TEXT command expects a 2D point and draws it at the current ELEVATION of the current UCS.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

I can't reconcile your data with what would be needed for both a circle and a label but here is a sample using a point with pdmode=33 (a circle).  Enter your E,N,Z, and Label in the first 4 columns of the spreadsheet and use the formula illustrated to create a command to draw the point and the label in autoCAD. Copy the formula down and then copy/paste column E into the AutoCAD command line. Modify as necessary for circles, instead of points. Circles would need a radius or diameter. The pictured illustration assumes an annotative text style is current.

[Kent1Cooper]

---

@dtmcnamara wrote:

.... make a label to the right 5 units with a text height of 3, with no rotation of the text and it would say "Elevation=791.624894540797 ft". The only issue is after the code I need to hit enter twice in order to go to the next point and I cannot figure out how to do this inside excel.

---

You can get the 5 units to the right much more easily, and if you put a semicolon at the end of the text content [that's the macro character for Enter] it will end it for you:

TEXT @5,0 3 0 Elevation=791.624894540797 ft;

[Put two semicolons if that's appropriate in the larger context.]

As an aside, I would seriously consider whether you really want to express these down to 15 significant figures -- realize how small a trillionth of a foot  is [far below any capability of survey equipment to distinguish].  Not to mention all the space it takes up on the page....  Three decimal places should be enough for any practical purpose.

[dtmcnamara]

Thanks @dbroad

so what exactly is the difference between text and -text?

Using -text I am able to finally string together my over 200 columns of calculations into the following

C 1664227.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 2 -Text 1664232.8168781,-30727025.6231642,791.624894540797 3 0 Elevation=791.624894540797ft

and create the circles and label them.

I know this is probably the most manual way to do this, but I am much more experienced in excel so to me this was the best way. Also this makes a almost "idiot proof" way for anyone working to input data and get a line of code to just copy and paste in.

[dbroad]

@dtmcnamara: Glad it helped.  AutoCAD has evolved over the years and I wish these differences were covered in the help files but commands get renamed and revised and the older forms get prefixed with a hyphen or require special means to access them.  The original text command was command line based.  The text wouldn't appear until you finished entering it at the command line. Dtext was like single line text but was dynamically rendered on screen. This worked well as an in-place editor, making the experience of entering text closer to a word processor but not quite there. It was also not a good command for automation.  Mtext was then added to allow the creation of paragraphs of text as a single object.  Later it was renamed to text.  So if you use (command "text" ....) or use a script with text in it, it prompts differ and may include the need to specify a width first.  The editing environment triggered by the mtext command isn't good for automation either.  So -text gets the original non-dynamic text version which behaves better during automation.