I would like to have the flexibility of working with tables like AutoCAD and Excel do in Rhino - Excel, that a table can be inserted in AutoCAD and can be editable. By the way, it is linked to Excel, if any information is modified in Excel, it appears reflected in AutoCAD. This function is very useful.
1 Like
I’m not familiar with Autocad Excel table integration but adding a +1 here in that I’ve been meaning to look into how to achieve a relatively basic Rhino<->Excel integration to create plant schedules (i.e. quantities of plants) from areas in a Rhino file.
It seems to me that it would be very useful for all kinds of scheduling tasks to have a user-friendly way to be able to insert an Excel table (or similar) into a Rhino file as something like a dynamically updating block, linking cells to various geometric/spatial information in the Rhino file. This could open up all kinds of BIM-like workflows…
Does this exist already? Please let me know if so!
1 Like
Please give it a try with Tabl_ for Rhino,
2 Likes
Many thanks for the tip @jessesn.
Tabl is certainly a start in the direction I’m interested in developing.
Not exactly clear from documentation and some reviews imply issues but it seems to work ok for me in R7. I haven’t tested it in R8.
It doesn’t look like it’s being actively developed by @tmwarchitecture @visualizor but the code is open source - GitHub - tmwarchitecture/Tabl_: Spreadsheet interface plugin for Rhino
The bigger question I have in relation to this is -
Why is there, or seems to be, so little interest in this type of dynamic documentation tool/ functionality from the Rhino user base…?
I’m becoming the BIM guy at a small landscape practice in London. Revit is a horribly painful and inefficient tool for modelling landscape projects. I’m exploring options for integrating Rhino and Revit - Rhino for flexible and efficient modelling, Revit for documentation and BIM - but the possibility of ditching Revit and just working in Rhino has real appeal. I just need to find/ develop a set of documentation tools to enable this.
I think there is a lot of interest from users for this feature. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been implemented yet.
Will we see this feature in r9? Sadly, i don’t think so.
The request for a table object has been around for quite a while. This is a very large project and we are currently trying to figure out the minimum feature set needed to make this useful with the idea of allowing for more features to be added in the future.
3 Likes
I think F4R has something to offer in this regard:
1 Like
@Piotr thanks for links but I’m not sure (Tables | Food4Rhino) offers as much as Tabl in in terms of dynamic integration with objects in a Rhino file, and Table Mapper | Food4Rhino seems to be designed for managing data in table format in Grasshopper, rather than being a documentation tool?
@stevebaer good to know there is some thinking going on behind the scenes.
Is there a way that I and others interested can usefully feed into this discussion/ brief development?
Does Tabl_ | Food4Rhino provide a useful starting point for further development in your view?
Thinking out loud - in terms of UX I’m wondering if a graphical programming interface might enable the flexibility needed for the wide range of potential uses for a table object.
I have limited experience with grasshopper but will have a play with various grasshopper<=>excel workflows I’m finding out about in the forum.