AutoCAD dimesion Export to EXCEL

[Anonymous]

Does any one have VB or VBA codes to take only the dimensions from AUTOCAD 2014 drawing and export all the dimensions to Excel. I dont want to capture it from block attributes.Please kindly help me with codes or advice.......

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> export all the dimensions to Excel.

Can you please descibe more detailed what you like to do (plus upload a drawing that holds the objects to be exported).

Especially "export dimensions" ... dimensions hold multiple lines, arrows, dimension text ... what do you want to export? And if you like to export only the dimension value, what do you do with a list of values without knowing which dimension on AutoCAD holds which value in the Excel file?

- alfred -

[kasperwuyts]

It's not exactly hard to imagine a case where a drawing would just contain 2000 dimensioned rectangles of different sizes, each representing for example a steel sheet with a length corresponding to that dimension. So in that way it would be simple material takeoff.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> a drawing would just contain 2000 dimensioned rectangles of different sizes

if you get 4 dimension values exported, 100,80,60,40, ... how do you know what rectangles exist in the drawing?

So again, we don't know what to export (geometry of the dimensions, only value of dimensions, all types of dimensions like radius, diameter, ordinate, linear, ...) and how they should be "connected" to the objects in the drawing we can guess a lot ... 😉

- alfred -

[kasperwuyts]

I'm not sure why you would find this so peculiar, Alfred. In my business it is for example very common to clad an entire building with steel sheets with a fixed width and variable height, for which the person preparing the BOM might lay all this out in an Autocad drawing. I do this pretty often, but use dynamic blocks so i can simply use a data extraction to get all the sheet lengths. Ofcourse the downside of dynamic blocks for something like that is you lose the ability to stretch. So i can very well imagine the use of directly extracting a bunch of dimension sizes.

Being able to do this is in fact a question that popped up at a technical meeting we had earlier this day, so I might look into it later. I will give it a try, though i'm no expert on linking autocad and excel vba.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> steel sheets with a fixed width and variable height

Then you have an additional info: all exported dimensions are heights ... and yes, that works, but the OP has not defined any definitions like that ... and therefor I'm asking for details, not more and not less.

>> I do this pretty often, but use dynamic blocks so i can simply use a data extraction

Agreed! That is the better workflow than export dimensions.

And before I create a sample for anything I first ask of the current workflow will make sense or there could be done some things better. So I reduce my time and hopefully the OP one's too.

>> Ofcourse the downside of dynamic blocks for something like that is you lose the ability to stretch

You might built the stretch action into the dynamic block?

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

hi alfred...

thanks for your concern.,...

I'm a beginner for the VBA for AutoCAD...

actually what i want is... we have Quality inspection (QC) template for each drawing which has only the Dimension values... after changing the dimension in the drawing it should update with exact location in the QC template. here i have attached one drawing and QC template for the same.. 

pls go through and help us to solve.... i also dont have any clue now how\where to relate the same dimension to excel field...

..RK...

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

[EDIT] our posts crossed, so this one here is deleted [/EDIT]

- alfred -

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

As I understand you create the drawing, then the XLS is created and now you want the values from the AutoCAD dimensions to be filled into column C within the XLS.

The problem arises now: how should a tool know which dimension has to be filled into wich row (of column C).

>> i also dont have any clue now how\where to relate the same dimension to excel field...

I guess we first have to declare the workflow and so the question is first: what can be changed from these two files?

• can we change the excel structure then we might use some cells within the XLS to find out what dimension belongs to which cell
• can we change the drawing structure then we might have the option to store position/description/tolerance in the drawing and so the XLS can be created from that info (starting then at line 6 to refill the XLS with every update).

Maybe an important question: how often do you create new DWG/new XLS compared to how often do you modify existing DWG/and XLS should be updated therefor?

Is it more than 80% new DWG/new XLS and that get never modified? (then we need an alogithm for just create the XLS)

Or is it more than 80% you created a DWG/XLS and that get updated a lot of times? (then we need to save the relation between dimension and XLS-row)

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred..

Yes, you are right that its really tough to match the dimensions to XLS cells just like that... !!!

Actually we designed machines based on the customer requirement where most of the times only sizes/dimensions will vary in our drawings.. 

so in this case when first time making the XLS template for a perticular drawing will match the dimensions value with the related description column by manually (which ensures correct descriptions will be matched with correct dimensions)... (Files which we alread shared with you was prepared manually)

If say, drawings will get modified (in terms of dimensions) then corresponding Template should get updated.

so we welcome your advice to perform this task... 

Thanks...

RK......

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

one idea for the workflow, not sure you like it, but it would make it as automated as possibe and as easy as possible.

When you create for every dimension a layer like that:

Layername: DIM_01, DIM_02, DIM_03 ... so "01", "02", "03" defines the order in XLS (the position on column A)

Within the layermanger every layer has also the column "Description" ... use that for the description in XLS column B

So the user has the choice to define the order for the eport, as well as the description, the dimension value comes then from the dimension on that specific layer.

Will that work for you?

- alfred -