Data Extraction- standard template

[CAD blaster]

Hi all,
I've been exploring the wonderful Data Extraction tool in AutoCAD 2008 to count up block infomation in our drawings. (Sales floor plans for a clothing retailer if you're interested).

This is my first foray into EATTEXT so i'm please to say I didnt find it hard to make it count up exactly what I wanted and get it to display clearly in the resulting table.
(I'm actually counting up points on a certain layer that are drawn within all our blocks)

This is great for me but I'd like to share this time saving process with the rest of my team who arent really CAD savvy enough to do the whole process themselves.

Unfortunatly I cant see a way to avoid having to go through the whole EATTEXT process in every new drawing.
Is there a way to simply copy and paste/ insert a table that will count up the points?

Hope that makes sense, it's been a long day!

Thanks,
Jonny.

[Capt. Computer Crasher]

Hi all,
I've been exploring the wonderful Data Extraction tool in AutoCAD 2008 to count up block infomation in our drawings. (Sales floor plans for a clothing retailer if you're interested).

This is my first foray into EATTEXT so i'm please to say I didnt find it hard to make it count up exactly what I wanted and get it to display clearly in the resulting table.
(I'm actually counting up points on a certain layer that are drawn within all our blocks)

This is great for me but I'd like to share this time saving process with the rest of my team who arent really CAD savvy enough to do the whole process themselves.

Unfortunatly I cant see a way to avoid having to go through the whole EATTEXT process in every new drawing.
Is there a way to simply copy and paste/ insert a table that will count up the points?

Hope that makes sense, it's been a long day!

Thanks,
Jonny.

Sorry, but new drawing new data extraction if you try to copy the drawing it will mess up the old data extraction. Each seperate data extraction has its own .dxe file that holds the info and settings for that perticular data extraction. now you can use the .dxe to bring the table into a drawing that does contain the data extraction but still have to use EATTEXT to do it but all you have to do is pick the .dxe file then hit next thru to the end of the data extraction wizard. This however is a different situation than the one your asking about.

[wpeacock]

Not too sure what you are trying to do, but have you tried the command "bcount" which is available once express tools is loaded?

regards

Wayne

[CAD blaster]

Yep I use bcount from time to time but it doesnt give the infomation I need for this task.

What I'm doing with the data extraction is to count up the number of points contained within all the blocks. Each block represents a clothing rail and each point represents the amount of stock it can carry.
I cant believe I used to count it all by hand!

Anyway, its a shame to hear that EATTEXT needs to be run each and everytime, even if we do use the same .DXE
Maybe I need to convince IT to upgrade us to AutoCAD 2010 so I can record a macro for it!

[irneb]

Unfortunately it's not exactly "that" simple. You could always use an already made DXE as a template to start from. This would help in setting up calculation columns and such, but you'll still need to ensure the correct drawings are selected.

Otherwise you could manually edit the DXE file in Notepad. Find & Replace the old DWG filename with the new. I've sometimes even gone as far as saving the DWG to DXF then F&R the DXE filename to the new one.

But this is definitely a wish item if ever there was one!