Visual tools 1

[SKIAK]

I make a lot of spreadsheets. One thing that I don't like about Excel is I haven't found a good way to produce diagrams that show whats going on (say cantilevered retaining walls, showing the wall to scale, soil profiles, pressures, ect. ). Its not really important but I thought it would help people who use it correlate between what they think its doing and what it is actually doing. I was expecting to dump the info into CAD but after looking online and my limited coding knowledge I thought that might be too time consuming. Any suggestions or good references to check out?

 

[SKIAK]

I haven't played with this enough to get it to work how I want it, but here is link to a site with free vb code. The page has a download that will make a .DXF file from Excel you can open with AutoCAD. Don't know if it helps anybody else but I thought it was nifty:

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.asp?ID=8211

 

[yakpol]

I've seen some impressive graphic examples with MS Office drawing tools powered by VBA. Looks very neat and time consuming.

 

[Ben4piping]

Uploaded file shows how I use a drop-down control to show a different detail in the same space on a sheet. Detail groups each have filled backgrounds. The groups are placed one over the other. A graphic is displayed by bringing to the front.

http://files.engineering.com/getfil...-7552-4f96-8ecf-5ebb0674c42c&file=DwgDemo.xls

 

[corus]

Carrying on from this, is it also possible to read in a CAD file, say in dwg or dxf format, so that you can use the data points in the shape properties spreadsheet of Clyde's, for example, rather than having to type in 100s of numbers?

corus