How to: bring excel data into Inventor

While the exchange between Microsoft Excel and AutoCAD is flawless there are some issues when transferring data from Excel to Inventor. These are a few ways to insert spreadsheets into an Inventor Drawing:

Using the General Tab search for the excel document you want to insert. This method inserts the contents of the file into a table that can be edited directly in Inventor and is linked to the existing spreadsheet. Linking allows others to make changes to the .xls and update without the needing to have Inventor. This can be a good or bad thing – depending on your co-workers!

The second way is to open the excel sheet and copy its contents. Then go to Tools-> Clipboard-> Paste  Special. This inserts the data and embeds it with the original excel file.

Thirdly you can use the Insert Object command to insert the table of data. This too retains the links to the original file.

Dependant on the size of your excel spreadsheet you may also need to edit the font size and column width in the original to ensure the table is not too big for the sheet. This type of sizing issues occurs frequently with the ‘Insert Object’ command therefore I would recommend ‘Paste Special’ as your first port of call when working with excel tables. While the data inserted can look ‘blotchy’ on the screen it prints out perfectly.

If you have any queries feel free to call Symetri at 061 919000.