Spreadsheet to ArchiCAD

Written by László Nagy

Introduction

This document is about how you can take a table created in a spreadsheet program (such as MS Excel)and import it into ArchiCAD.

Let us consider that we want the following Excel table to appear in ArchiCAD:

There are 3 different ways by which you can achieve this. These are:

Copy-Pasting

The process consists of simply copying the desired cell range from Excel and pasting it into ArchiCAD.

More specifically:

In Excel, select the cell range you would like to take to ArchiCAD.
While holding down the SHIFT key, select 'Copy Picture' from the Edit menu (this menu item appears only when SHIFT is pressed).
A small Dialog box appears. Here select the values as shown below:

Click OK to perform the copy operation.
In ArchiCAD, go to the desired Floor Plan or Section/Elevation Window and select 'Paste' from the Edit menu.
The following Dialog appears:
Select 'Paste as drawing elements' as in such a case the contents of the table will be converted to lines and texts. Otherwise, a single bitmap will be created.

After a successful paste operation you will receive a picture similar to the one below:

Notes:

You can transfer these tables to PlotMaker just as well as to ArchiCAD. In PlotMaker you can paste the lines and texts either to the Layout or you can choose FileNewDrawing to create a new PlotMaker drawing, paste the table there and add this drawing to the Layout.
Our experience shows that although you can try to transfer tables also from Word or other word processing applications, the result is usually better when done from a spreadsheet program.

Saving as bitmap file

With this solution you can save the table in a graphics format (bitmap or vector) and place the resulting picture on the ArchiCAD Floor Plan or Section/Elevation Window.

One thing that is pro saving as a graphics format is that it can be done from any application from which you can print so may not be limited to a spreadsheet but can do the same from a word processor.

On Windows
There is a utility called Doc2pix available on the Internet on the following site:
http://www.informatik.com/
You can download a trial version of the program. After downloading, please follow the instructions given by the program (you will also need to download a Visual Basic DLL for the program to work).
When the Doc2pix application is successfully installed you will find that there is a new driver among the system printer drivers named 'PEERNET.DRV TIFF 3.0'.
Note: you may need to go to 'Safe mode' in Windows in order to install it if there are some conflicts and the installation will not finish successfully.
Providing you have set the proper settings in the Doc2pix panel do the following steps:
1. In Excel, select the table you want to transfer to ArchiCAD and select the menu item 'FilePrint AreaSet Print Area':
2. Set the page size to a large enough size so the table fits on one page. Then choose 'FilePrint...':
3. The driver will create the temporary files then asks you for a file name. You can specify many different file formats, not only TIFF.
4. There is an intermediate step you need to perform because the Doc2pix program will always print full pages. So you need to open the saved file in a bitmap editing software and crop the size of the bitmap so only the desired part of it will be included in the file.
5. 5. Go to ArchiCAD and select 'FileMerge...' to merge the file onto the Floor Plan. After merging you may also need to change the picture's size or resolution.
Alternatively (in ArchiCAD), you can go to the Figure Settings Dialog and select and configure the picture there.
On Macintosh
On Macintosh you can use the Print2PICT utility.
Note: You can place these graphics files in PlotMaker as well by adding them to the layout or by creating a new drawing, adding the file to the drawing and then adding the drawing to the layout.

Using the 'Spreadsheet' GDL Library Part

This Library Part has been developed by Laurent Godel (aka. 'GDL Guru') for the specific purpose of placing spreadsheet tables into ArchiCAD. This Library part can be ordered directly from the author (Laurent Godel: ) or from ObjectsOnline (http://www.objectsonline.com/). Naturally, the library object is available for both Windows and Mac.
Here is how to work with it:

In Excel, make sure you have only the table that you want to copy on the current spreadsheet. Then select 'Save as...' from the file menu. Select 'Text (Tab delimited)' from the 'Save as type' list.

Specify the file name for the file and click OK to save the file.
The table data will be saved into this TAB-delimited text file from which the 'Spreadsheet' GDL object will read in its data.
Switch to ArchiCAD, and make sure you have the library loaded in which the 'Spreadsheet.gsm' file is located. Then go to the Object Tool Settings Dialog Box and select the 'Spreadsheet.gsm' file from the Object list.
You will see the following Dialog Box:
For the full coverage of all variables available in the library part, see its documentation.
Some of the important features:
- In the 'Name (or path) of the File to Import' field you can either type the name of the text file (if it is located in the 'ArchiCAD Data Folder' folder within your ArchiCAD folder) or you can provide the full path to the file. Alternatively, the library part stores the last ten used file names and you can select from those.
- You can set colors for texts, cells, table outline etc.
- There are also several settings for the format of the font used in the library part, such as setting which cells, rows or columns to display with bold font etc.
- You also have the choice of displaying a header and also a footer with either the date or the file name in it.

After you changed all necessary settings, click OK to leave the Dialog and place the library part. Make sure that you colsed the file in Excel otherwise it will lock it and the Spreadsheet object will not be able to read it.
When everything is OK, it will show a result similar to the following:

Page last updated: Thursday, June 10, 2004