Linking Excel to Bricscad for geometry

Brian Oberdorf

Is their a utility or method that can take geometry in excel and draw that in Bricscad automatically? I am interested in one way transfer of data from Excel to Bricscad and the ability to update it with various iterations of design.

For example I may be investigating a storm water issue on a subdivision for which there may be many treatment devices spread across the site.  I have a spreadsheet that automatically calculates the geometry for each treatment device based on entering a few parameters (area, length, depth, etc) to ensure certain constraints are met - for example set length:width ratios, depths, detention times, etc).  It would be convenient to have this data drawn and updated automatically on a base plan in Bricscad, for all of the treatment, to see how it looks without necessarily having to do it manually.

Jason Bourhill

Hi Brian,

The simplest way to do this would be to use excel to generate a _SCRIPT that you can run in BricsCAD. Excel actually makes quite a good script generator. Scripts are just a list of BricsCAD commands, so its a one way process only.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

David Waight

@Jason,

That sounds very interesting, and could be very useful, do you have any samples of these scripts generated by Excel?
Can other spreadsheets be used to create these, such as Calc in Libreoffice?

Regards,

David Waight

Jason Bourhill

@David,

Take a look at this post
http://www.cadconcepts.co.nz/generating-a-script-using-a-spreadsheet/

It includes the source files so you can play with it yourself. You should be able to do this in any spreadsheet application, although the actual function you use may need to change.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

David Waight

@Jason,

Thanks very much for the link, I will take a look and see what I can do.

Many Thanks

David Waight