blocks to bill of materials..something new to me

[Eva]

Hi everyone..! I have more than 7 yrs exp in autocad but only on the design, drafting side, no exp yet on the logic side like creating a bill of materials out of my drawing. My new work now is in systems furniture (panels)and it requires not only space planning, but how to automatically appear the bill of materials like product description, sizes, codes and prices. I researched about the blocks and attributes but still i don't know how to start and put all the things together and how to make a spread sheet.:unsure:
i'm still naive about all these because my past jobs were mostly design and drafting.:oops:
'hope you could help me to start.:)

thanks!
eva
architect

[Eva]

..by the way,
i'm using autocad 2000.

thanks!

eva
architect

[lpseifert]

You may want to investigate the EATTEXT (Extended ATTribute EXTraction) command if 2000 has it. If not try the ATTEXT command.

[Eva]

hello! thanks very much for the advice to check on the "ATTEXT" command.I tried to do the blocks and attributes and I also create a template file to the notepad(under the same folder of my dwg file).Then I command ATTEXT.Under the file format I chose the CDF,then I selected the 5 blocks i did(each associated with attributes).What I am confused about are the template file and the output file box.For the template file box I tried the ones that I created in notepad. For the output file box I am clueless.:unsure:
Hope you could help me again on this..:)though I'm getting too specific..:oops:

Many thanks.

Eva

[Zorba]

I've written a program in VBA recently that does something similar, that automatically retrieves attributes from blocks that i want and puts them into Excel, but i don't know any other way of doing it nor if 2000 even has VBA.