Easy way of updating a seating chart?

[ybenner]

I'm VERY new to AutoCAD. I haven't even received training yet, but I will soon. Anyway, right now, at work, I have a new task of updating seating arrangements on the site maps for our facilities in AutoCAD 2010. I need to update the name/dept/title of who is assigned to an office or workstation. FWIW, these text labels appear to be located on one layer. Is there a way to quickly update these names without having to navigate through the map, click on each text field and manually change them? Our facilities are quite large and I'm looking to do this as efficiently as possible.

 

Thanks.

[ReMark]

Would Find and Replace work?

 

These labels aren't attributes by any chance are they?

[ybenner]

No they are not....not that I could tell anyway. Find and replace will work to find office numbers, to replace a specific person with a different person, but not to assign a person to an open office (since there are several open offices). I sounds like I'm stuck doing this the hard way. I'll have to ask my boss for a raise. :wink:

[ReMark]

You have no experience with blocks and attributes?

 

Had the data been in the form of attributes your job might have been a little easier.

 

What appears in the open offices? Nothing? Dashes?

[ybenner]

No. I'm as new to AutoCAD as you can get. The open offices have an office number, such as "208" and "Open." I looked through the blocks in the current floor plan that I'm looking at (there are 156 of them) and their attributes, but I don't see anything with office numbers and names..they are mainly tying in plumbing, electrical materials, etc into the floor plan.

[ReMark]

No block that says Room Number, or Room Label something along those lines?

 

See, attributes can be extracted to a format that can be used in an Excel spreadsheet where a person could do all kinds of wonderful things with them. Or the attributes can be extracted to a table and displayed within AutoCAD.

 

New to AutoCAD and CADTutor too it appears. Welcome.

[ybenner]

Thanks. I just find one block that ties into the Office numbers...

 

The block was called RN_PLSY_001_P

 

Tag

ROOM#

ROOM1

ROOM2

ROOM3

 

Prompt

Room#

Room Name (top)

Room Name (Middle)

Room Name (Bottom)

 

Unfortunately, These do not seem to tie into the hundreds of workstations that appear to be added and labeled after the fact.

 

There is a way to export the attribute data into Excel, make changes and import back into AutoCAD? If so, I would love that.

 

If I could make changes and keep spreadsheet data on the offices only at this point it would help. Once I get into class next week, I can look into getting all these workstations into the same block.

 

Thanks for your help.

[ReMark]

Check out the Tables command. It is not only possible to create a table within AutoCAD but you can also export the data to a spreadsheet program or database. The exported data is saved with a .csv filename extension. The file can be opened in Excel via the Open > Text File > Files of Type drop-down list.

[beardking]

ReMark,

Do you happen to have a link to a decent tutorial that would help explain using Tables, attribute extraction and blocks? I've been working with ACAD for many years, but I've never gotten a handle on this feature. In my current line of work (commercial architecture focusing on restaurants) I find many times that something along these lines would be very useful.

 

Thanks in advance

Beardking

 

(oh, and sorry for trying to hijack the thread)

[BIGAL]

All of those should be in the help, making a block is pretty easy just a group of objects that can have also displayable values.

 

If you have say a block staying on this theme of say a circle with a number in it, you can change the number but its always inside the circle.

 

Back to post draw a computer and put a number inside it which you can then simply change. You could also have hidden what room its in so a extraction lists the computer num and room.

 

If you have an existing block you can double click it and the block editor will come up letting you change things add lines delete add/ del attributes etc. Bit futher on for yobenner when adding a block you could use a lisp etc so it adds extra info that you pick off the screen (eg pick point for block pick room name enter user name now draw block) likewise export to excell and can go other way and update the blocks from excel

[BIGAL]

Here is a tree with a number added attribute using block editor

tree3.dwg