Master the art of creating and managing tables in AutoCAD in this detailed guide. Learn how to use a data link, create a new Excel data link, and link an entire sheet or a range of cells from your Excel file to your AutoCAD drawing, all while maintaining the relative path.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step guide on creating a new file in AutoCAD, saving it, and working with an empty table before using a data link. It emphasizes the importance of placing the drawing in the negative, negative quadrant relative to zero, zero.
- It explains the process of creating a new Excel data link and the importance of using a relative path. The name provided during this process is for AutoCAD's use in order to recognize the data link.
- The writer discusses how to link an entire sheet or a range of cells from an Excel file to an AutoCAD drawing. The data link allows for viewing one sheet at a time and the linked sheet can be previewed before being brought into AutoCAD.
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Let's start by creating a new file, File, New, and I'll use the template, and File, Save. And let's save this in our Keynotes folder as Elevation Keynotes. I'll hit Save.
And we're starting with a blank drawing because this drawing is going to be built slightly differently. We're still going to place it in the negative, negative quadrant relative to zero, zero, but I'm going to start by working in a table in AutoCAD, but using a data link. When I'm in the Annotate tab, I can go to the Tables section, and I see that we can create a table, and we can also use this button to link data.
Now, I can do both of these in the same workflow through the tables, and we're going to do just that. I also want to point out that you can create table styles just like you can create dimension styles, multileader styles, and text styles. You can even see that we already have a Keynote style in our table.
Let's click that and see what we can create if we create a blank table. In this case, I want two columns. Let's, for the example, use 12 rows.
If your settings don't look like this, it's because I previously created a table with these settings, so change this to 2 and 12. I'm using the Keynote style, and for this case, I'm going to start with an empty table. When we do this for real, we're going to use a data link.
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I'll hit OK, and I'll click to place this on the screen. In this case, I'm going to place it at 0,0, 0,0, Enter, and it's going to prompt me to enter the title of the table. I'm going to name this Elevation Keynotes and then click off to the side.
Let's zoom extents, and let's see what this table looks like. This is a fairly simple table with two columns, and like any table in Excel, if this is not created with a data link, I am able to double-click into this cell and type my information. Now, in this case, I do want to use a data link, so I'm going to zoom out just a little bit, select this table, and hit Delete.
Let's go back to Table, and instead of starting with an empty table, I'm going to use a data link. Now, in this case, it's going to say, No data links found, launch the Data Link Manager. Like I said, it's all in the same workflow if you haven't linked your data.
In this case, I'm going to create a new Excel data link. The name in this window is not asking for the name of the Excel file. It's asking for the name that AutoCAD will use so that you can recognize the data link.
In this case, I am going to call it Elevation Keynotes Excel. That way, when I'm looking at my data links, I can remember what file I'm linking to. When I hit OK, it will prompt me to browse for the file.
Again, I always want to use relative path, so I'm going to hit the three dots to find my Excel file. I'll browse to my Keynotes folder and find Elevation Keynotes. Open.
The data link is going to ask us which sheet to use. It will only look at one sheet at a time. In this case, I only have one sheet in the file, and it's the default Excel sheet 1. It will give you the option to link the entire sheet or a series of cells.
In this case, I do want to link the entire sheet. It might be a good idea to only link to a range or a named range if you have that in your Excel file. The preview at the bottom will show me what this looks like when it gets brought into AutoCAD.
I'll hit OK, and it will create the data link. I'll hit OK again to append this to my table. Now we will see the preview of the table.
I'll hit OK. Again, I'm going to place this at 0,0. Enter.
Now, 0,0 is this corner. For our other Keynotes, we used this corner. I'm going to start my rectangle for my outline, which if you remember from a previous video, was 4.5 inches by 1 feet 8 or 20 inches.
So I'm going to go to the Home tab, make a NoPlot my current layer, and draw a rectangle. Starting at 0,0, Enter. D, Enter for dimensions.
4.5, Enter. And 1 feet 8 inches, Enter. I'll click to the side.
Now remember, we did make this half the height. We'll do that at the end of this video. And now I can move this table.
I'm going to Move. I'll move it into this top corner. And I'm going to extend this to the right, and I'm going to move this down half an inch.
I want to make sure that I have that top section where I can add in my text, which says Elevation Keynotes. So Move, Down, 0.5, Enter. Instead of drawing this again, I'm going to go to the Roof Plan Keynotes file, which I still have open.
I'm going to use the Selection window and grab those two lines and my Roof Plan Keynotes. I will hit Control-Shift-C to copy with Base Point. And I'm going to grab this top left corner.
Jump back into Elevation Keynotes, Control-V, and paste here. These came in on Layer 0 because that's where we copied them from. I'm going to double-click in and change this to Elevation Keynotes.
We can edit this text using the text editor that AutoCAD has for each cell. So I'll grab all of these cells and use Edit Borders to make sure that this is no borders, just like our other Keynote files. I'll hit OK.
