Extraction of large amount of data from drawing

[starki83]

Hello everyone, I am user of cadtools for a long time, somewhere around 8 years. I used it on numerous projects as a contractor and it has helped me alot!
 This is one thing that bothers me a little.
I have design of road from designer company, and on one drawing there are more than thousand cross-sections. These cross-sections are placed for example in 50 rows and 20 columns. Cross-section one is in first row and first column. Section two is below it on drawing... so first 50 sections are in first column, 21.st section is in second column and so on... Lets say i want to extract hatches of sub grade in cross sections but in order they are placed in drawing. So when i use selection window in auto cad and select them, they are usually extracted the opposite way, from last to first, but some percentage is extracted without apparent rule. So first i have to reverse data in excel, and I have to locate manually all which are out of order and place them where they should be. Which is sometimes a pain and time consuming.
Also, sometimes, sections are drawn different way, first 20 in first row than21.st in second row an so on.
Is there an easy way for me to extract them in proper order, or at least to align them in excel afterwards in proper order.  Any help would be useful. Thanks.

[Lars]

Hi,

Try this:

• Select all hatches and export to Excel.
• Use Bounding box values column to draw the hatch area annotation back to the cross-sections, on a new layer. (Use CadTools Draw from coordinates command with som copy paste from Excel)
• Now export station names to Excel by using a crossing. Then use exact same method for selecting all hatch area annotations and also export them to Excel.
• Finally copy/paste the area column into the previous Excel sheet containing station names. Use Excel data sorting to sort all columns on station name.

This method would result in station names and corresponding area value in a Excel sheet.



If you don't have station annotations on your cross-sections or you want to sort on how the cross-section is placed in the DWG you can use this odd but working procedure:

• Create a dummy surface based on a rectangle exterior border of the cross-section set.
• Draw a rectangle border, convert it to a 3D polyline. Manipulate the elevation of the corners so you will end up with a sloped surface that will represent your desired sorting.
• Triangulate the surface and then drape the text onto the surface, it's like dropping the text down to the surface.You may need to do some testing to get a slope that will suit your needs
• Export the text to Excel and use Excels sorting to sort on text elevation (elevation from surface)

/Lars

[starki83]

Thanks Lars! I was on track to something similar to what you suggested as first way to do it cause I have cross section numbers.

For the second idea, wow! it is great ! I will try it as soon as possible, I only have to find a lisp to lift texts to surface. I already can imagine this surface, height difference from first to last in one direction must be lower than height difference from fist to second in perpendicular direction.

[Lars]

You don't need a lisp, the command is already in CadTools. Look at "Edit/View Surface", "Drape Objects", that will drape your text onto a CadTools surface (based on text insertion point).

[starki83]

Well, thanks again! I somehow missed that great drape function. I used combination of few functions to drape polylines onto surface, and had lisp for draping points, I wasn't aware cadtools can drape even text entities.So now I tried solution 2 and it is great!
For solution 1 i was thinking about adding one step, a lisp  routine to move text (number of section) to nearest hatch center. To be sure that exported station names and  hatch area annotations are of same coordinates on each profile, so hopefully they are extracted the exact same way. I am not yet sure if that step would bring any new benefits
Of course, before extraction do a quick visual inspection if they are moved properly.