excel spreadsheet to dxf file

[kenm]

Hi all,
my plasma is set up to cut top and bottom rails for a standard 2m long metal fence with 19 vertical bars at 100mm centres and a slot either end for the bolts to attach to the post.
Every run of fencing will have several "standard" panels with a make-up piece at the end that could be anything from 300mm to 1980mm long. These either have the bars at 100mm centres and reduce the gap between the end bars and the bolt slots or if this would be too short the bar centres are reduced.
I have an excel spreadsheet that calculates the bar spacing etc. which could easily be tweaked to give bar centres.
Is there any software that could easily take excel output and produce a dxf file for upload to sheetcam to produce a gcode file?
Ken.

[adbuch]

This may not be what you are after, but take a look and let us know. It sounds more to me like what you are after is some sort of parametric modeling software where you can assign variables to some of the dimensional parameters and auto-insert the values from your Excel file.
David

https://pdfmall.com/excel-to-dxf

[manac]

David is correct, your looking for a cad software that has design tables (Solidworks name).
You enter the variables that drive the part and the cad program generates the dwg file.
Once you spend the little extra time on the first one the rest take almost no time.
What cad do you use?
Matt

[kenm]

Favorite at the moment (only because I have learnt a lot of the keyboard shortcuts) is Librecad. Simple and straightforward for most of the stuff I do - mainly straight lines and curves/circles.
The other one I have used is Solid edge, but seems wasted on the simple stuff I do.

I also make "bow top panels" the sort of fencing seen in parks etc consisting of 16mm round bar bent with a semicircle at the top. This complicates the cut panels as the bar spacing of the bows is fixed at 106.5 mm so all the calculations are for the spaces between the fixed bows.

While the excel spreadsheet will calculate bar centres for each type of fencing to 2 decimal places, on the shorter panels the results are occasionally visually not esthetically pleasing and the manual calculations and program input are a bit long winded.

So I have decided to do all the cut panels manually and build up the files as they arise on the jobs. Today I have calculated and produced g-code files for 10 cut panels which took 3 hours including cutting and cleaning up the bars.

Ken.

[manac]

I didn’t see anything like “design tables” for Librecad.
Solid Edge will do what you need with “Variable Table”.
Did a search on Solid Edge variable table and there are some you tube tutorials out there.
Good luck.

[kenm]

Thanks manac,
just had a look at some of the Solid Edge videos, way more capable than librecad. Will have a play around with the variable tables.
Ken.