Autocad Text (Table) Export to Excel

I have encountered that exact (Hydraulic BOM even) same issue, and have yet to find the answer... I have historically retyped it all into excel by hand, which as you know can be painstaking, and introduces more chances for Human error (which I already do plenty of). I'll eagerly await any further responses of someone who might have a ace up their sleeve so to speak.

Good question!

Not a valid command in Autocad 2002. Also not a valid command in the most recent release of Draftsight (open source clone of Autocad). need to see if I can find someone with a more recent release of acad around here to try this with. Now just for clarification, this is not an OLE object. It is a bunch of plain autocad text entities in a grid of lines, there is no metadata or intelligence here.

edit:

ok, tried it with ACAD 2006 and just as i suspected, this only works with a "table object" whatever that might be. (OLE object I suspect.) plain text is rejected when selected.

I gave you a GA anyway though because if the table had been built using the newer functions it would have worked.

I'm going to try outputting it as a text DXF file and playing with it and see if I can massage it with a text editor into a CSV format file. I'll let you know how things go.

ok, while exporting it as an ascii dxf file then renaming it as a TXT file and opening it in a text editor to massage it technically works, the text is buried in a lot of formatting and is not in any sort of order so it is going to take a LOT of massaging to get anything usable. not to mention bits of text like the quantities which are single digit integers get lost in all of the formatting data and there is mo clear way of determining which one belongs to which item number or part number or description. so it looks like I'm back to cutting and pasting each line of text.

Do you speak BASIC?

I had a similar problem; some colleagues were producing artwork for numeric labels (to be etched onto copper clad fg (PCB-type material). I found to my horror that they initially typed in 1000 numbers (for a production run), then every 3 months or so, they edit every number (just adding 1000 to each) for the next run. I wrote them a bit of VB (took about an hour from go) to save them the tedious, error-prone task.

Taking the DXF export, it's fairly easy to identify (and modify) the text entries. If you look up "DXF structure" you can work out how to identify the text entries. You can then export them in .csv format. Only works if all the cells have text in, and any irrelevant text can be easily identified and ignored. Best way would be to save just the table part of the drawing, so only the "useful" text is present.

Can't promise anything, but if you want me to give it a go, pm me your e-mail address and I'll contact you - either send you my source code, or you could send me your DXF and I'll see what I can do.

(Don't hold your breath - this w/end is a bit busy, so I don't know when I can get round to it).

P.S. Ta for the GA.

I haven't farted with Basic since Quickbasic 4.5, VB completely loses me, too much like C which I could never wrap my head around. But I'm about halfway done with the copy and paste at this point so I'm thinking it is not worth the effort, but thanks for the offer. from here on out we'll do it as an excel spreadsheet and import it and we won't have this problem...

That's been my solution... start them in excel and import to Autocad.

I am guessing the table is composed of text you manually typed into it and not extracted info from attributes of acad blocks.

If so, then what I would do is copy the text to the clipboard then paste into excel. Most likely there will be reformatting needed in excel. I do not know any other way.

Hi Rorschach,

Do you really need Autocad for Hydraulic Schematics? Have you considered E3 from Zuken, it is an electrical, panel, harness, fluid and hydraulic schematic tool. All the options are interlinked.

It is an intelligent object orientated - easy to use tool, that will eliminate the problems you are having. The BOM can be directly exported (or imported from Excell in fact) into Excell, and will be accurate. The drawings can be updated anywhere in your schematic, and this is reflected in the BOM. One mouse click, if you change anything will re-compile your BOM. I am also using Autocad at my new employer, and I am shocked at how long BOMs take to create. I am spending days doing it. In E3 takes it takes seconds.

Have a look at E3 from Zuken, you will be pleasantly surprised.(I am pushing for the introduction of E3 here by the way)

Regards

Bedfordwheelnuts.

I'm going to try this after lunch, but, why not PDF the DWG, then use Adobe OCR text recognition to grab it. Should paste right into Excel.

Like the idea - tell us if it works.

_{GA pending .}

Well, my immediate need has been resolved but I can see this coming up again in the future as we deal with legacy data. I too am curious how this works out.

Hi All,

Legacy data can be handled in E3. E3 will import DXF's for your graphical drawing, and will import your Excell for the BOM. Once you have the BOM, you can put intelligence into your drawings.

Regards

Bedfordwheelnuts.