Hello! First post from a lurker trying his hand at his own project.

I'm working on updating my companies AutoCAD block library to try and streamline our workflow; we mostly use autocad to draw P&IDs and do high level system design before we start doing detailed layouts and 3d modeling in Solidworks. We do a lot of our engineering/sizing using years and years of excel workbooks which end up containing all the information that will end up on the P&ID. Right now we look for an old similar project and then start editing the process layout; this leads to so many unnecessary errors and confusing as the drawings are passed between engineering, sales, design and fabrication. I've been experimenting with some dynamic blocks which have block tables containing a number of visibilities, dynamic movements, and hidden attributes to help me work quicker and now I want to take it further.

Now I would like to setup a .net program that will pull data from a complied excel document and propagate it to specific blocks in drawing templates. I really like the block table because it lets you tie a ton of information to your blocks (making it easier to do process design) but Im coming up pretty light on information on working with it in any programming language. Anyone have a nice easy way to set blocks to certain "rows"/entries from the block table? Has anyone experimented with behavior for setting specific attribute values with vba/.net/lisp/c#on blocks with a block table?

Ive read a couple of article on through the interface and other acad blogs but nothing as specific as my caveman brain needs before I do so much work. Ive only seen articles about accessing the information and not about changing the setting.

My plan is to setup a template/standard excel file,run an acad command load it into datagridview and then push the settings/attribute values out to each entity (with some kind of check to confirm it is the correct block, IE check a specific attribute for a numbering system in the template).

Also please be patient with me, Im a mechanical engineer and learned very little programming in school; I can just taste that delicious automation and would love to stop spending hours a day doing data entry.

If youve done anything similar to this I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks!