Adding tag to text/ Exporting to excel.

First of all I would like to state that I am a complete microstation novice when it comes to anything other than drawing lines and boxes :)

I am trying to export text from Microstation (XM) to excel.

On the attached PDF I show a corner of a particular drawing. The 3 pieces of text are part of a reference file which is used on all drawings that I work on. (text content changes drawing to drawing)

My question is, can I assign something to each piece of text in the reference file so that once I have produced thousands of drawings using the same reference I can export Text 1 Text 2 and Text 3 from all drawings into excel, say Text 1 for all drawings in one column, Text 2 for all drawings in another and all the text 3 information in a final column

Is this possible? Is this easily done?

Thanks for any help!

  • yes it relatively easy once you get some basic concepts but unfortunately with just plain microstation and no customised coding  like VBA its a one way traffic flow from microstation to excel .. to get excel to send back to microstation you either are going to have to learn VBA programing and create the code or pay for someone elses code like Adam Lambert's Cadd Pro (Aus) or Jon Sumers of La Solutions (UK) Flexitable  these guys have built user friendly GUI's to send tags in both directions..

    As your  a total newby  it would take too long to explain how to do tags and tag reports

    but essentially  

    1st step define or create a tag set

    2nd set the feilds to hold tag data and what they will be and if visible

    3rd attach a tag to an element 

    4th populate the tag fields ie keyin values ie text or numbers

    5th continue attaching tags one at a time to each element you want tagged.

    6th define a tag report template  > set what you want to catch from the tags or the elements attributes that the tag is associated or linked to

    7th create tag report > based on the template you tell mstn to go fetch the tag data and it puts it into a comma delimited text file report.rpt or aname.rpt

    8.th rename the report extension rpt to csv and just open with explorer whichwill now launch your file with Excel

    9th reformat your columns how you want with headings as the export will only have column data but its in the order you defined in the template..

    10th you can do this in the batch processor to extract the tag data for many drawings then merge all the excel or text data together...

    And thats it  sounds a lot but I can do this really quick now because I really understand it also if your tagset and report template are well named you can keep using them over and over...

    Now to really understand  how follow a brilliant tutorial at www.eatyourcad.com  ( if you still cant work it out email me offline and I'll send you link to my video presentation on tag reports I did at one of our  BE user  group meetings sorry no sound)

    and search for TAGS 101.. I promise if you print it out and follow it in mstn you'll be a tag expert in no time... and you'll start finding things you should have been using tags on all along... 

    BTW This is very much easier if you buy caddpro or flexitable .. it will pay for itself first plan set of 20 plans in time saved and I used it for populating title block details and up reving  5000 drawing title blocks in 500 drawing files in under 1 hour on major freeway project...as its bidirectional ....so the exel file became our drg register and transmittal doc too...with the 3rd party program there is no text intermediate steps it goes straight to excel and straight to dgn...

    Great resources for newbees

    If you want great very low cost microstation (ebooks only under $8 us )  newbee  self help books ( but will quicky take you to advanced user) :-   www.adagebooks.com  he has table of contents for download check em out...

    Also there is a subscriber only microstation only magazine called Control Alt Delete at  www.penbrush.com.  ( Im a bit biased here as I'm a contributing writer for the mag) also has table of contents download for last issue... great resource material ...97% content 3% advertising  but its microstation related  advertising...


    Good luck and keep posting 

    Lorys

    Lorys

    Started msnt work 1990 - Retired  Nov 2022 ( oh boy am I old )

    But was long time user V8iss10 (8.11.09.919) dabbler CE  update 16 (10.16.00.80) 

    MicroStation user since 1990 Melbourne Australia.
    click link to PM me 

    Answer Verified By: Unknown 

  • Lorys,

    Thank you for the detailed reply! I only want information to go in one direction and thats from Microstation to excel. I will have a look through the documentation you suggested and see if I can get up to speed.

    Thanks!

  • Unknown said:
    I am trying to export text from MicroStation (XM) to Excel

    There is an XYZ Text tool that might help.  Key-in: DIALOG TOOLBOX XYZTXT

    More info in MicroStation help.

    MicroStation Tags

    You might consider using MicroStation tags for your titleblock data.  Tags have a number of advantages over plain old text.  First, they have a name, so you know the purpose of the tag.  Second, they have reporting tools to that it's easy to create, say, a CSV file of tag data that you can open directly using a spreadsheet application.

    Thirdly — although this isn't built-in to MicroStation — titleblocks using tags lend themselves to automation.  Many organisations use tagged titleblocks to help harvest the kind of information you want.  Some even update titleblocks from their Excel data.


     
    Regards, Jon Summers
    LA Solutions

  • Hi.

    Finally got my head around Tags! Is there a way to automate the "generate report" for a large number of files? I know the poster above stated that batch processor could be used but I'm not sure if PowerDraft V8i has the capability to do so.
  • Unknown said:
    [2013] I am trying to export text from Microstation (XM) to Excel

    Unknown said:
    [2015] I'm not sure if PowerDraft V8i has the capability to do so

    You've marked this thread as answered. Since you've changed platform, and answers are different, it might be better to start a new thread.

    I don't believe that PowerDraft includes the batch processor. 

    FlexiTable™

    FlexiTable can export tags, it can work through multiple DGN files and it's PowerDraft enabled!

     
    Regards, Jon Summers
    LA Solutions