In the bad old days, linking Excel spreadsheets to your AutoCAD drawings using OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) was, at best, a hit and miss affair. OK, well it kind of worked but it was never very satisfactory and was subject to various limitations.
With the advent of Tables and Data Linking in AutoCAD, the whole process of adding live spreadsheets to drawings became a breeze technically and much more pleasing aesthetically. Although this technique has been available since AutoCAD 2008, many people are not aware of it, so I thought it would be good to demonstrate it using AutoCAD 2012 (although the interface is just the same in 2011).
I'm guessing that most of you at some time have had a parts list or schedule or some other tabula data in Excel that needed to be added to a drawing, so here's how. It's a 2 part process; first you make the data link and next you create the table… yes, that's all there is to it!
If you'd like to follow this demonstration, download the Excel file and save it to a suitable folder.
How to Link an Excel spreadsheet to an AutoCAD table
On the AutoCAD Ribbon, click the Insert tab and then the Data Link button on the Linking & Extraction panel.
In the Data Link Manager, click the Create a new Excel Data Link option and give the new data link a name (I usually make this the same as the Excel file name to avoid confusion). Click OK
In the New Excel Data Link dialog, click the elipsis button (three dots) and navigate to your Excel file. Select the file and click Open.
You should now see a preview of exactly what the table will look like in AutoCAD. Click OK. That completes the data link part.
Next, click the Home home tab on the Ribbon and click the Table button in the Annotation panel.
In the Insert options section of the Insert Table dialog, click the From a data link radio button if it is not already checked. Select your data link from the drop-down list (this will be the name you gave it earlier). Check the preview for confirmation and then click OK.
Pick the insert point for the table when prompted and that's it. You should now see your Excel spreadsheet dynamically linked to a matching AutoCAD table. If you need to resize the table, just use the Scale command - this ensures that the text and cells all scale proportionately.
The great thing about this is that any changes to the Excel spreadsheet will be updated in your drawing, just like an Xref. Notice too that all the styling on your spreadsheet such as font weights and cell backround fills is translated into AutoCAD table cell styles for you - neat.
