Linking object in a drawing to an external Excel Spreadsheet

[bethelcad370537]

Hey Everyone, first post here,

This may have been asked somewhere else (I'm in a bit of a hurry) but what I'm trying to do is this:

I have a co-worker who is in charge of all the lighting here on my college campus. What he wants is to be able to open the drawing of campus and be able to click on a light and view all the information about the light (all contained within an external xls file) and that light only...Everything I've seen so far has done nothing but insert a table on the drawing and that's not what we want (as seen here on this video tutorial: http://youtu.be/QLGoxHMg8Zw). Again, we just want to be able to click on a light and see just the information for that light (basically the row corresponding to that light's ID in excel).

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

-BethelCAD

[Wanderer]

Hey Everyone, first post here,

This may have been asked somewhere else (I'm in a bit of a hurry) but what I'm trying to do is this:

I have a co-worker who is in charge of all the lighting here on my college campus. What he wants is to be able to open the drawing of campus and be able to click on a light and view all the information about the light (all contained within an external xls file) and that light only...Everything I've seen so far has done nothing but insert a table on the drawing and that's not what we want (as seen here on this video tutorial: http://youtu.be/QLGoxHMg8Zw). Again, we just want to be able to click on a light and see just the information for that light (basically the row corresponding to that light's ID in excel).

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

-BethelCAD
Welcome to AUGI!

I haven't done this myself with vanilla autocad, but, while you wait for someone who can give you advice on that... I'm curious if your campus's maintenance department uses a CAFM or CMMS, those seem like much better tools to manage a lot of data?

If they don't, AutoCAD Map3D might be a better choice than vanilla AutoCAD.

I work on a medical campus and was wondering the same things years ago, but, based upon advice and research, decided that if we do something like this, it will be through our existing CMMS program or through adding CAFM components (there's a facilities management forum here (http://forums.augi.com/forumdisplay.php?519-Facilities-Management-In-Practice) that might contain some related topics, but, is not focused on autocad).

[cadtag]

Map3d makes it feasible - , but as far as vanilla acad - it's do-able with some custom programming, just not OOTB

[jaberwok]

I don't know, it's just off the top of my head but -
could you make a hyperlink point to single row in a file?

[bethelcad370537]

Welcome to AUGI!

I haven't done this myself with vanilla autocad, but, while you wait for someone who can give you advice on that... I'm curious if your campus's maintenance department uses a CAFM or CMMS, those seem like much better tools to manage a lot of data?

If they don't, AutoCAD Map3D might be a better choice than vanilla AutoCAD.

I work on a medical campus and was wondering the same things years ago, but, based upon advice and research, decided that if we do something like this, it will be through our existing CMMS program or through adding CAFM components (there's a facilities management forum here (http://forums.augi.com/forumdisplay.php?519-Facilities-Management-In-Practice) that might contain some related topics, but, is not focused on autocad).

As far as I know we don't have any CAFM or CMMS (to be honest I've never heard about either one) and I just have access to just plain ol' AutoCAD 2012 Arch. so I may be stuck with just doing custom programming.

And Cadtag, how would I go about doing said custom programming?

jaberwok: I think I tried that but what it did (if I'm understanding you correctly) was open to the whole spreadsheet...I'm looking more for something along the lines of the quick properties box that pops up when double clicking a line, block, etc.

[Wanderer]

As far as I know we don't have any CAFM or CMMS (to be honest I've never heard about either one) and I just have access to just plain ol' AutoCAD 2012 Arch. so I may be stuck with just doing custom programming.I hadn't heard of them either, until I happened to be called into a meeting one day when we got a new VP who'd come from a hospital up east who couldn't believe we didn't have CAFM.

The CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) is usually owned by Operations/Maintenance and manages their work orders and preventative maintenance scheduling, but, since they've got so much information there already about equipment specs and history, it would be a good place to start to plug in.

A CAFM (computer-aided facility management) is usually used first by space management, handling leases and departmental moves, etc, but, obviously, since it's got all of the space data inside, it's perfect for asset management of any stripe. We haven't gotten our CAFM installed yet, but, when we do, engineering, finance, real estate, construction, and other departments (maybe IT, telecomm and key control?) will buy a single license to plug into the program so they can use it how they need as well.

[Ed Jobe]

As far as I know we don't have any CAFM or CMMS (to be honest I've never heard about either one) and I just have access to just plain ol' AutoCAD 2012 Arch. so I may be stuck with just doing custom programming.If you have ACA, then are you not using arch objects, i.e. Light styles? If you are using ACA objects, the look into property set definitions. Also, ask this in the ACA forum, not plain acad. If the lights are just plain blocks, you might be able to add schedule data to them. If so, you can customize Quick Properties to display some of the info you want.

[bethelcad370537]

If you have ACA, then are you not using arch objects, i.e. Light styles? If you are using ACA objects, the look into property set definitions. Also, ask this in the ACA forum, not plain acad. If the lights are just plain blocks, you might be able to add schedule data to them. If so, you can customize Quick Properties to display some of the info you want.

Sorry for the confusion, but upon further review I just have plain acad 2012...I also contacted my predecessor and he said he may have made some blocks and so I'll have to try and find those, if not just create the blocks myself.