KozMos CAD2XL Project

  Data exchange & synchronization from ACAD table to Excel spreadsheet
กก         KozMos CAD2XL Project can automatically analysis the border lines of a real AutoCAD draw table and try to build a representation table in active Excel spreadsheet. The merged cells in drawn table can be detected and transferred into Excel very well.
        CAD2XL Project will treat text and mtext as cells' content. Multiple annotations within one cell will also be marked and sorted by their Y coordinate. Their contents will be joined by "\n" to distinguish them each other. We can select the whole table or just part of the table. Both situations are acceptable and CAD2XL Project will perform a friendly message interface to show the progress on the AutoCAD drawn table analysis.

        To start CAD2XL Project, just type C2XL at AutoCAD "Command:" prompt.

Dialog Interface      

There are ten features in CAD2XL Project:

  • Auto-display 'Tips on net step'
    If you are new to CAD2XL Project, the tip message will show some useful information and guides. Since you have got familiar with them, just disable it.
  • Erase selected table before create new
    This is used to erase all selected table before building a new table via current active Excel spreadsheet (by calling XL2CAD Project).
  • Preview update (dialog keep active)
    The preview or update is a very useful feature, when we have data modified in Excel, the Preview update will show an update result but do not close Excel and CAD2XL Project. If we are not satisfied with the result, we can make further adjust in Excel without re-build the linkage again.
  • Close Excel while quit
    CAD2XL Project can close active Excel spreadsheet automatically and quietly if this option is on.
  • Content entity type in new table
    There are two versions in XL2CAD Project while creating new tables in AutoCAD. We can choose the invoked command just in the dialog.
  • Cell background color
    We can set different color for normal cells and AutoFill cells in Excel to distinguish them each other while modification in Excel.
  • AutoFill annotation in empty cells
    There are two cell types in AutoCAD table: one is cells contain content and the empty cells. Because the whole table will be transferred into Excel (different type of cells use different background colors set by user), and new data may be filled in former empty Excel cells. In this situation, the AutoFill feature will automatically record the changes in Excel and use a proto annotation to fill in the empty cells in AutoCAD table. This will really save time in AutoCAD.
  • Change alignments for different objects
    If we enable the AutoFill, there will be two different content type: the former annotations and the AutoFilled objects, we can process the alignment operation to both of them or just only change the AutoFilled objects.
  • Annotation alignment
    CAD2XL Project support three different alignment types: Left, Middle and Right. Also we can choose do not modify the alignment. The alignment take effects not only on Text's alignment, but also the text location in cell.
  • Excel range to be update
    We can update the whole Excel used cells or just user selected cells.

Suggestions & Special notice:

        Although CAD2XL Project can process MTEXT very well, but the textstring property may contain format information which will be dropped by CAD2XL Project, so the update contents for MTEXT may lost the former format. In most situations, we do prefer using multiple lines of normal TEXTs instead of MTEXT in order to reduce unknown update mistakes. Another reason is that there may be lines of contents in MTEXT, so mixed text and mtext may also cause unknown update result. KozMos do recommend you using normal text in real AutoCAD Table and make sure that only one text object in one line if you explode the mtext.
        If there are two annotations in AutoCAD cell but we modified the corresponding Excel cell with three or more lines, the "second" annotation will be converted into MTEXT (in case it is only a normal TEXT) and all Excel data beside the first line will be directly passed into AutoCAD as the MTEXT content.

        If we enabled AutoFill but no proto annotation is selected, the Preview/Update button will keep gray because nothing to fill in the empty cells.

        Because CAD2XL Project will process data into Excel cells one by one, the speed may little slow on very big and HUGE AutoCAD Table. But this can not be problem because we can process part of the HUGE AutoCAD Table in order to speeding the procedure. In fact, modify HUGE AutoCAD drawn table in Excel is really inconvenient at all.

More powerful solution:

        An enhanced KozMos product named AutoTableX will be able to provide more powerful features than CAD2XL Project. Supporting by AutoTableX, some useful cell properties such as colored background and content can be supported while synchronizing from Excel back AutoCAD. More detail information can be found at HERE!

Program record

  • 2006-04-10
    Support true color in AutoCAD2007
  • 2006-03-31
    Upgrade
  • 2005-03-08
    Program codes optimized to run more stable
  • 2005-02-25
    Fix bug on Autofilled pure digital number in Excel cells
  • 2005-02-05
    Fix bug on lost-linkage cells
  • 2005-01-31
    CAD2XL for importing AutoCAD real table into Excel and processing data synchronization.
  • 2005-01-26
    CAD2XL Project start codes.
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//Koz Jono Yeoh//

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