A better way to record coordinates?

[jcfeeken]

OK, once again I need help. Right now for our projects we have circles with numbers. On most occasions we draw dimensions from grid lines to the circles. Easy enough. However on certain projects we make a coordinate table listing the x and y coordinates. Since I am a basic Cad guy the only way I know of doing this is having the properties window open and cutting and pasting the individual coordinates to an excel worksheet. Is there an easier way of doing this? Thanks in advance!

[sschwartz85916]

OK, once again I need help. Right now for our projects we have circles with numbers. On most occasions we draw dimensions from grid lines to the circles. Easy enough. However on certain projects we make a coordinate table listing the x and y coordinates. Since I am a basic Cad guy the only way I know of doing this is having the properties window open and cutting and pasting the individual coordinates to an excel worksheet. Is there an easier way of doing this? Thanks in advance!
What version of AutoCAD are you running?

[mmccarter]

The X and Y co-ordinates you require to be listed, are these the centre of each circle?

If yes then I guess when way might be to use the filter command and filter circles. When this is done all circles in your current drawing will be selected, then use the list command and everything will be listed in the command line. A bit of F2 action and you can then highlight everything and copy this and edit out the stuff you don't need.

Whether or not this method is actually any faster than what you currently do I am not sure! It does have the advantage that no circle might be accidently missed though.

To take this a stage further a simple lisp routine could be written to extract the co-ordinates and output them to a txt file. I however am not clever enough to do thi, but I am sure someone here might be :)

Best of luck in your search.

[Opie]

The X and Y co-ordinates you require to be listed, are these the centre of each circle?

If yes then I guess when way might be to use the filter command and filter circles. When this is done all circles in your current drawing will be selected, then use the list command and everything will be listed in the command line. A bit of F2 action and you can then highlight everything and copy this and edit out the stuff you don't need.

Whether or not this method is actually any faster than what you currently do I am not sure! It does have the advantage that no circle might be accidently missed though.

To take this a stage further a simple lisp routine could be written to extract the co-ordinates and output them to a txt file. I however am not clever enough to do thi, but I am sure someone here might be :)

Best of luck in your search.
Why not make the circles and text (change to an attribute) into a block. You could then use Attribute Extraction Wizard (EATTEXT) to export the block information to an external file.

[Ed Jobe]

Sounds to me like you might want to use Ordinate dimensions instead of lines and circles. Just set a ucs to the origin of your grid and each ordinate dim will label the x or y coord.

[scott.wilcox]

If you are using 2005 or higher, you can use fields, and link the center of the circle coordinates to your table.

[wpeacock]

If you are using 2005 or higher, you can use fields, and link the center of the circle coordinates to your table.

Scott, do have any examples of this?
regards
Wayne

[irneb]

I'd also say, as Opie's suggested, make the circles & text into blocks with attributes. Then you can use Attribute Extraction to save to a file which you can open in Excel & copy-n-paste back into ACad. If you have a 2008 or later, you can use Data Extraction to accomplish this automatically into a table - after you've set it up, a one click would update it (so adding new / deleting "circles" would require just one mouse click to get the table updated).

Just one thing though, these methods would only work with WCS, they don't read UCS coordinates.