topic Re: Import excel to archicad? in Collaboration with other software

Import excel to archicad?

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2010 03:14:16 GMT

Hi,

Is it possible to import excel file into archicad?
because i need to do some calculation inside archicad, eg the costing for carpentry work, or archicad itself has something like excel can do calculation?
Thanks.

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2010 03:34:22 GMT

The best approach is probably to do the calcs in Excel, print to PDF and place as a drawing in AC. Reprints from Excel will update automatically or manually depending on your settings.

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 15 May 2010 03:56:50 GMT

Hazel wrote:
Hi,

Is it possible to import excel file into archicad?
because i need to do some calculation inside archicad, eg the costing for carpentry work, or archicad itself has something like excel can do calculation?
Thanks.

To get the schedule that you illustrate, you want to export from ArchiCAD to Excel and do the math in Excel. Any schedule can be saved or published as a txt (csv) file and be opened directly in Excel.

Karl

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:53:58 GMT

Should I do like you're mentionning, will I have to create a new PDF each time I change something in the original .XLS file? In older version of AC there used to be a way to import and have it automatically update each time something would change in the original file, and this is what I'm looking for as I manually create window and door schedules in Excel.

Thanks ahead,

PB

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Link — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:22:42 GMT

That way used OLE (Object Linking & Embedding).

AFAIK that was discontinued by Microsoft, which is why it is no longer in ArchiCAD.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:33:57 GMT

As Link says, linked Excel and Word objects (using Microsoft OLE) was only supported on the Windows platform and has not been supported for several versions now.

As the PDF is the only option, a solution to assure that the PDF is kept updated is to write a small Visual Basic macro that is made part of your schedule spreadsheet and which overwrites the PDF every time the spreadsheet is saved/closed. I might have some free time next week to look at writing the macro if nobody else posts a solution sooner.

(For Mac users: VBA was part of Office 2004 for Mac, was removed from Office 2008 for Mac, and has been returned in Office 2011 for Mac ... so a similar macro would work for Office 2004 / 2011 users. It would just be easier on the Mac since saving to PDF is a built-in OS X function.)

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Jefferson — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:59:27 GMT

Hi Karl -

In reading this post, and your last comment I am left wondering if I am interpreting this correctly.........there is or might be a way to have PDFs, printed from Excel, update every time the origin Excel file is saved/closed.

Extrapolating, does this means that if a PDF derived from an Excel worksheet, [or any PDF?], properly placed and linked on a layout would/could update........."kinda" like OLE? After everything I have been reading that sounds too good to be true.....

Sort of what I am now seeking here:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=187864#187864

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:28:39 GMT

Hi Jeff,

Sort of. Even with the old Windows OLE thing, what you saved from Excel is what showed up in PlotMaker. If you didn't save the changes, they didn't show up. So, saving a PDF isn't that much more. I never did write any script to do it automatically though as hinted at in the old post below.

Note, that there are a few things that can make the hassle of having to use Excel (summarized well in your other post) not quite so bad for repeatedly updated schedules:

You can set up a Publisher set that publishes your raw data to one or more CSV files.

You can Import the CSV file into a worksheet in your Excel workbook using the data import feature of Excel in a way that you can quickly update that sheet after each Publish. Your actual schedule would be in a separate worksheet in the workbook and would have formulas that grab the data from the imported-from-csv sheet, so that you can maintain your formatting as desired. You'd have to delete rows, or insert rows and copy-down formulas as the length of the table changed.

(If you import into your actual schedule, if there were new rows published, you would over-write your summary row(s).)

When you import a csv file into a sheet, set it up to save the query def in the worksheet - this lets you refresh the data subsequently (see next post)...

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:33:06 GMT

On the worksheet that is now linked to the csv (text) file published from ArchiCAD, you'll see the attached External Data toolbar.

Just click the red exclamation mark button to refresh the worksheet with the current contents of the CSV file. Your actual schedule on the other worksheet will then of course update, as it references the cells/values on this sheet. Save that sheet as PDF and refresh the placed PDF in AC.

So, workflow would be: click Publish button in AC, click refresh data button in Excel, save main Excel sheet as PDF, refresh placed PDF in AC.

Yeah, FAR from ideal! The ability to perform simple calcs within AC schedules such as you illustrate would sure be wonderful. A 3rd party tool that lets you do spreadsheets (Cigraph has one) is not enough - we need the full query power of the AC element schedules... combined with user formulas.

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Jefferson — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:13:01 GMT

Hello Mr. Ottenstein!

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! My computer skills, understanding of unfamiliar procedures, ability to absorb, navigate, apply and execute methods have surely been tested with this one..........[As an example I had to look up CSV files ]

I'll give this a go but have to admit at first glance it seems equally as complicated as my current "work flow". Of course, I thought the same thing about riding a bicycle as first....... I certainly appreciate your taking the time to illustrate a work around in line with my wishes/needs.

Is it possible as moderator a poll could be conducted, [they get more attention than just posts right?], asking for a community response to calculation ability, even modest, in schedules......? Just a thought.

Thanks again Karl!

Re: Import excel to archicad?

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:07:10 GMT

Jefferson wrote:
Is it possible as moderator a poll could be conducted, [they get more attention than just posts right?], asking for a community response to calculation ability, even modest, in schedules......?

There are at least two polls about this already:

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=21689

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=758

Hope I helped more than I confused, but it seems you found a working solution to your problem anyway! 🙂

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Import excel to archicad?

davdelven — Sun, 31 May 2015 09:59:26 GMT

Take a look on this CADIMAGE post

http://blog.cadimage.com/2012/09/importing-keynotes-database-as-text-file-from-excel/