CAD blocks to excel spreadsheet

[sjw]

Hi, not sure where to post this, as I am so much a beginner, but not sure how to describe my question.

 

I have a drawing of an office that we are space planning (adding chairs and tables)

 

All these chairs and tables are blocks, I want to add a ref or id to these blocks so that i can automatically high light all the drawing and right click, which will then produce a spreadsheet that displays a take off of the drawing...

ie the amount of each type of block, i can then assign a price to these refs in excel and produce a invoice.

 

I know this is possible as I used to work for a formwork company who had this system in place, but I couldnt figure out how to put it into words properly.

 

Any help, or ideas will be apprciated. I have used autocad for over 5 years but never really delved into the nuts and bolts side

 

Thanks

Sam

[ReMark]

BCount will tell you the number of blocks of each type in a drawing. Do you need specifics about each block as well such as manufacturer's name, model number, cost, etc.?

[Tankman]

I don't know if this'll work but, take a peek-a-boo, http://www.xanadu.cz/en/excellink.asp

 

EXCELLINK 2008 (V17.1 upd 9/2007) is an ARX application for AutoCAD 2008 (plus Map 3D 2008, Mechanical 2008, Architecture 2008 ...). It allows to bidirectionaly hot-link attribute and block data between an AutoCAD drawing and an Excel 2000/XP/2003/2007 sheet.

 

Welcome to the forums! Where are you posting from?

[sjw]

Thanks for the excellent replies!

 

Remark, that is exactly what im after, I think Tankmans suggestion is the same idea, but doesnt export directly from blocks?

 

Thanks for the Welcome! I am from Maidstone in the Kent, England. I have previously worked as Formwork designer, Structual Caddie in london, and now doing some space planning and 3d viz!

 

EDIT

I just tried the bcount command in 2008 and it works well. It tells me the amount of blocks and what type in the command line. So what iam after now is instead of the info being displayed in the command line, it is displayed in excel. Any ideas??

[thorny]

There is a long way of getting the block information into Excel. If after running the BCOUNT command, hit the F2 button. You will then see all the blocks listed. If you copy and paste these into a Notebook file and save. You can then import this into Excel by:

1. Data > Get External Data > From Text

2. Select the file wherever you saved it

3. A text import wizard is shown

4. Select the 'Fixed with' option > Next

5. Click to insert a break just before the number > Next > Finish.

 

This should put the block name and No.of blocks in different coloums.

Hopefully that will help to some degree.

[DNK]

Dataextraction will push it to excel. It'll take a moment to get what you want, but once you figure it out, it's a very powerful tool.

 

It will also put it into a table you can place in the drawing.

[sjw]

ok, thanks. That, despite being a long winded method, does work! thanks for your info

if any one knows anyway of speeding it up that would be appriciated.