Organizing Data for Export

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PRESENTER: In this session, we will

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talk about organizing data in preparation

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for exporting to an Excel spreadsheet.

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To demonstrate the process for exporting data to Excel,

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we have a semi complete graph already in Dynamo.

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This graph represents alignment stations

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at the geometry locations and their respective coordinate

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values.

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We will organize the data to prepare for an export

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to an Excel spreadsheet.

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Once we have the Excel document, we

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can then imported back into Civil 3D

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as a table or share with our project team.

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We are now at step three in the workflow,

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organizing data for export.

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Let's get started by switching over to Civil 3D and Dynamo.

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My drawing file is already open since the graph

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I'm working with is connected to this particular drawing file.

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In the Manage tab, under Visual Programming panel,

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I'm going to click to open the Dynamo interface.

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Once I'm in the Dynamo interface,

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I'm going to open the alignment geometry table Begin.

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I'm going to first run the graphs

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so the data I need is populated with the current drawling

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file I have open.

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There are 14 alignments in this drawling,

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but the one I'm most interested in is 6272.

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I entered in the name of the alignment data I want.

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This next group processes the entire alignment length

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and only includes the geometry stations along the center line.

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The final node here takes the station values and processes

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a point.

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I can certainly take this data and export right to Excel

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but I want to format this list a bit better so it

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parses information upon export.

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Let's take a closer look.

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We have the x values and y values as points.

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The intent is for column A in Excel

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to house all station values, column B the y values,

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and column C x values.

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So we need to get these values into their own letters.

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Since these are points, I'm going

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to search the library for point.

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I'm going to bring in the x node as well as the y node.

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We're then going to connect the output

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port of the coordinate system to both x and y.

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Run the graph to ensure data is flowing the way we intend.

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The next step is to join our station x and y-coordinates.

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So we'll create a list.

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Under the List category, under Generate, List Create Node,

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we'll click on the plus sign twice.

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For item 0, I want those values to be the stations.

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So we'll go back to our alignment stations node

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and connect the double output to the item 0 input.

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For item 1, we'll connect point y for our northern values

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and for point x, we will connect to item 2.

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Let's go ahead and run the graph and see

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what the data looks like.

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Dynamo gives us three separate lists.

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The first list is all of our stations,

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then are northings, then our eastings.

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Dynamo writes data to an Excel document

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by row with sublists written in successive rows.

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We want to export to the columns in Excel, not the rows.

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So we will need to transpose this list.

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Under the List category, under Organize Subcategory

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at the very bottom, we find Transpose.

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Add that node to our graph and connect the output list

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to the import list.

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Transpose will swap rows and columns in a list of list.

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By adding this to the end and running our graph,

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we now have many lists each containing

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a single station and its respective x and y-coordinates.

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Our data is now ready to be exported to Excel.