From Excel to SHP

[robw]

Hi, I've been asked to look into getting data that we have in excel into a shapefile via Civil 3D 2018.

Specifically, we have a lot of manhole data, i.e. location, type, various other attributes.

However, there are over a thousand manholes, so there's far too much to manually reenter into a blocks inside AutoCAD - we need to automate the process as much as possible, if possible.

It's easy if you enter the data into a block at the start with custom attributes to suit, then make a SHP from that selecting which attributes to export. But all the data in CAD is basic elements, just text and lines / circles, so that's a non-starter.

I managed to get things into a custom point with User-Defined Properties, but when I export to SDF, then link back to them, it's lost all the extra User-Defined Properties data.

I'll admit, this was a bit of a hail mary attempt 🙂

Any ideas?

Is it even possible?

Thanks

Civil 3D 2018

[WarrenGeissler]

Rather than go through all that - you should look at building an ODBC connection straight from your spreadsheet. As long as you have the coordinates in the spreadsheet it should work. 

[Pointdump]

Rob,
In addition to Warren's excellent advice, there are two other ways I can think of.
@Alfred.NESWADBA shows >>>this clever way<<< to add attributes to blocks.
You can also save your Excel file as a CSV and create a Shapefile of Points in QGIS.
I'm sure there's more ways.
Dave

[ChicagoLooper]

---

@robw wrote:

I managed to get things into a custom point with User-Defined Properties, but when I export to SDF, then link back to them, it's lost all the extra User-Defined Properties data.

Would it be possible to provide a clear and concise explanation what this means. For now, forget that the user defined properties were lost, simply explain what was lost and what value would have been added to the manholes if the data was retained.

As it stands, User-Defined Properties can mean many different things, such as:

1. Each manhole has a unique identifier and can be used to differentiate one manhole from all the others. 
2. Each individual manhole is no longer a wild bunch of text and lines / circles, they were redrawn and organized so each individual MH is now a single entity on a common layer.
3.  All manholes are now uniform and the only difference among them is their respective location.
4. Duplicate manholes which were on top of one another have been removed and for each unique x,y location there is only one manhole. 
5. It doesn't mean anything, it just seemed like a good term to add to the opening post.
6. None of the above.