Summary: This is a suggestion to change data extraction wizard GUI to a Revit-like schedule system. Chain-behaviour wizard dialog box looks old fasioned and less flexible compare to the second one

Description: It wastes a lot of time to create a data extraction using the current solution. The main reason is that the page-chained wizard dialog box isn't flexible to manipulate, because you need to go through all pages all the time, even if you edit the existing one. The second reason - too many pages are present that could be united (for example, unite pages "Begin" and "Define Data Source", or pages "Choose Output" and "Table Style").

For that reasons it seems to be old-fashioned in many ways.
So in my opinion it would be great if it has been looking similar as Revit-like schedule system:
1) create a schedule manager dialog box like a X-ref manager dialog box for example. After opening that dialog box, you can see the list of existed schedules, change their extraction properties and use them as templates like in a Revit's Project Browser - copy/paste schedules from the existing one;
2) change the step-by-step instruction wizard to a tabbed dialog box like the schedule properties dialog box in Revit. This gives more flexibility to use exsisting data extraction schedules as the templates for creating new one - you don't need to change settings in all tabs every time, just only required;
3) add the possibility to save .dxe file at the same folder as .dwg file by default, because redefining save path for every project file also wastes a lot of time. Or it would be better to save inside the dwg file like a specific object in a file database;
4) add an automatic update of the values in the data extraction schedule cells when adding/deleting objects that are stored in that schedules (like in Revit)
Also it would be great to add the ability to extract data from groups as instances. Sometimes would be very useful to create a list of groups with different names and count similar. Or to extract similar data of grouped elements like total length/area/volume or total values of specific block attributes

Product and Feature: AutoCAD - User Interface

Submitted By: artifex-ag796083 on 06/19/2022