Is this Excel spreadsheet possible to produce in Revit and Dynamo alone?

FAQ
1

I have attached an Excel Spreadsheet that I am trying to research whether or not it is reasonable to try and write a series of graphs that can attempt to re-create this spreadsheet’s data just by using Revit and Dynamo?
Obviously, using shared parameters and schedules in Revit can get me mostly there, BUT, If you examine the spreadsheet closely, it is doing some simple calculations on “Subtotals”! Revit does not easily do calculations on “sub-totals or sliding scales” natively.

~Dave

area_example.xlsx (13.2 KB)

2

Maybe, with a fair bit of work

You’d could be better off with a reporting tool that knows about grouping, subtotals and totals rather than trying to do it in Dynamo/Excel

This example uses the Revit ODBC export and Access to generate the reports.
To update the report is a 2 step process:

  1. Run the Revit ODBC export
  2. Refresh the report

20161201 Area Report.gif1910×916 1.76 MB

3

hmm…maybe, but I forgot to mention I have to provide an Excel spreadsheet as one of the deliverables and that’s just one more process to add to the list of software to hook into, aside form the fact that I know nothing of ACCESS.

4

read this perhaps: Excel to Revit Key Schedule Help

5

Konrad, Thanks for the link … Unfortunately that thread is really not helping with the process and logic here.

6

please be clearer about what you want

  1. Import Excel spreadsheet into Revit?
  2. Create Excel spreadsheet from data in Revit?
7

Dave,
I have been meaning to try this for a while now. After a really quick and easy sample it works. Based on the amount of formulas your file has this will be a very tedious task but if you are going to be using it a lot it might be worth it. Excel will convert strings into formulas when dynamo writes the file.
See images below.

Capture.png778×498 101 KB

Options two that I just thought of and might be easier. Create an excel temple with two pages. The first page blank waiting to be written to by Dynamo. The second fully formatted and all formulas read from the first page. Once Dynamo writes to the file the second page would be populated. This would only work if you Excel file was constant (no additional data rows or columns needed)

The first option would take longer but offers the flexibility of additional rows and columns. The second quicker setup time but can only receive data formatted in the same way each time.

Hope this helps,
Steven

1 Like
8

Steve, Your option 1 is the route I am going to run to ground. While option 2 is steamlined, but the Excel file data will not be constant for this exercise (640 buildings of data)!
Thank you everyone for your input and ideas! I will update and show progress as I work through this!

9

Dave,

In that case I want to share this node from clockworks. “Character.FromNumber” This will convert numbers to letter. Might be helpful for figuring out the column depending on how you are gathering the information.

You may already know about it but figured I would let you know.

10

Ahhh…now that is a node I have not explored yet! I can see where that will be handy here!