I need to take a load of co-ords from AutoCAD so a setting out engineer can load them into an EDM/total station.

They want me to put all the co-ords (theres thousands) in word doc or maybe an excel spreadsheet i can’t remember, so they can then input this into the EDM. Can i not just give them a DXF from cad or is does any one know how to export points to excel/word?

I really don’t want to be typing thousand of co-ordinates individually.

Cheers for any help.

surely the setting out engineer should be able to take the coordinates from a dwg file and transfer it to his total station? are they gps coordinates?

They’re coordinates from the drawing i have produced in cad, to Ordanace Survey grid/datum.

I think the client is a bit clueless and they want us to produce a spreadsheet so they can convert that to a csv file (i think). I reckon in this day and age you must be able to upload a dwg/dxf filw into a total station?????

nah, you can’t normally do that. you’ll need a LISP routine in CAD to do it for you. With a bit of searching about you should be able to find one.

AutoCAD isn’t really designed to do that sort of thing you – you’d normally use MOSS/MX or AutoCAD Civil 3d or something like that to do it.

I would have thought most setting out engineers worth their salt would have the ability to do it themselves anyway.

You might not need a lisp routine, it would depend on how, or what entity has been used, to create each point.

I have programmed a button on my toolbar to extract this info to an excel file. It takes seconds.

Email my the drawing over and I’ll take a look.

yeah i would have thought the engineer would be able to sort it, it’s just what the client wants at the minute. and it’ll take forever. I’ll have a look for a list routine. cheers.

kevj, cheers. It’s literally just 3d poly lines created in cad.

Right then,

There is a way of doing this, but you will need to place a block at each point you require a co-ordinate point from.

If there are ‘thousands’, I can send you over the block and you can place them. then send me over the topo and I’ll convert to excel.

Thanks kevj, but i’ve just discovered i can export all the info i need to a csv file using PDS. And I think one of structural engineers has the block thing that you use. so i should be sorted with one of them!!

cheers again.