Link Inside AutoCAD to Excel Worksheet

OK, so how about saving each issue as it arises of the AutoCAD drawing as a soft print, possibly as a .pdf file, and linking the spreadsheet to the print, rather than the original CAD file? Would that work?

But the problem if there is no communication of each other when change the revision, sometimes i saw some drawing with new revision without my control..but the communication is on and ok, but sometimes when we work too hard, we always forgot of something, so my point is that sometimes the revision is uncontrolled. If there any suggestion?

It sounds as though there is insufficient write-protection in that the responsible Engineer, or a drawing office supervisor perhaps, is the only one that should be writing files to the area where approved and issued drawings are kept. It's something the local System Administrator might be able to correct. If so, then it's an office management and control issue, not a software one.

If you want to have updatable AutoCAD drawing i.e. ongoing changes of the source excel spreadsheet shall frequently modify the attribute values of the designated AutoCAD block, you need to write a little interactive utility using VBA or Lisp for AutoCAD. If you don't have a VBA programmer and there is a real need for such a utility in your office, my partner and I could do it for you (of cause, before we start, we should agree on man-hours and hourly rate)

Cheers, Len

can u give me some example for macros things.

Hello BOO-BOO,

The good example of such utility would be 'Pile Schedule Generator' that we programmed for Jacobs-Canada couple of years ago. They had 3D models of steel driven piles modeled in AutoCAD environment by a plug-in program (AutoPlant Structural by Bentley) and they wanted to generate 2D AutoCAD drawings with tables filled with pile data.

Some of these data had to be direct measurements from the 3D model (X,Y, Z and pile length) whereas others had to be read from pile properties; input by the user (seq. number, design area, foundation name, cross-section and pile-type). Moreover, we had to classify piles according to design areas and foundation names and then arrange them into groups delimited by spaces, within each group piles had to be arranged by sequential numbers. Because of this relatively complicated logic we had to come up with a set of grouping criteria that the user could change to his liking and a table preview interface.

The result was a table in AutoCAD file where each line was a block with attributes. These attributes had been arranged once by the user to suit the drafting traditions of the office and the specific needs of the project. However, the values of these attributes were assigned and re-assigned by the utility.

Does this answer your question or you'd like to look at the code samples?

Cheers, Len

If you don't mind. I'd like to look the code samples.