Collecting data

[Anonymous]

I am writing a fairly complex macro in VBA.  I need to open an Excel spreadsheet, collect data from several columns, and it could be several dozen rows, then put the data into another Excel spreadsheet.  I'd like some feedback on the most efficient way to do this.  I'm using IV R2010, Excel 2000.  I already know how to open, get the data, and put it into Excel, but I've never tried anything with anywhere NEAR this MUCH data. Thanks, and If I've left out any vital info, holler.

[philippe.leefsma]

Hi There,

Sorry but this is an inapropriate question. This is a forum about Inventor customization, we deal with Inventor API related questions only. Your question appears to be focused on Excel API.

Please seek this kind of advice on a general purpose or dedicated Excel forum.

Thanks for your understanding.

Regards,

Philippe.

[jdkriek]

Philippe, I could be wrong, but I think the OP just didn't clearly state what Inventor was being utilized for.

He could be using Inventor API to grab some information from Excel, which would either drive Inventor or simply combine with existing data, then output the whole collection to another spreadsheet.

Either way the OP needs to be more specific.

[philippe.leefsma]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the feeback, yes Inventor API might get involved at some point to read/write data to an Excel sheet, however the question really seems unrelated to Inventor API itself:

"I need to open an Excel spreadsheet, collect data from several columns, ..., then put the data into another Excel spreadsheet... I'd like some feedback on the most efficient way to do this"

Wether the data come from Inventor or not, this looks like a stricly Excel topic to me. We, as Autodesk employees, do not support this kind of questions. If you have suggestions, please feel free to let know. 

Regards,

Philippe. 

[Anonymous]

Nope, you're both right... this is an Excel Issue.  The data being collected is from Inventor, but I'm grabbing it from and Excel spreadsheet. The MACRO, however is in, and runs from, Inventor,  I open a drawing, then open a couple of Excel spreadsheets one with a Structured All Levels BOM from the "top level" assembly", the other empty.  Then, I search the BOM for certain properties that relate to the drawing and dump them into the other spreadsheet. I think I need to go to an Excel VBA group... anyone know of a good one?  Thanx.

[Anonymous]

As a side point, do I detect a bit of "animosity" between AutoDesk and Microsoft, here??  Not to be surprised, Microsoft ranks just above Congress, and just below drug cartels on MY list...

[philippe.leefsma · Accepted solution]

I was just trying to enforce the fact that we deal specifically with Inventor/Autodesk customization topics here.

When devlopping add-ins based on Autodesk products, you are obviously going to deal with a number of OS specific and Microsoft questions. We cannot possibly support any programming questions just because your code is going to be invoked from an Autodesk add-in. There are number of dedicated forums out there that can handle your requests better than us.

You are welcome to ask questions that might involve accessing the Excel API from Inventor and perform mixed workflow between Inventor and Excel data (or any other API), however in that specific case, your request looked 100% focused on Excel itself, this falls out of the scope of our support.  

Regards,

Philippe.

[Anonymous]

Yup.  The way I'm doing it, this part of the Macro IS 100% Excel.  I looked at doing it in Iv, btu that was "one drawing at a time", fine for small projects, not so much for ones that have 250 drawings.  I'll go mining for an Excel VBA site.  Thanks to all for your help.