After you attach attributes to blocks, you can query the block attribute information and use it to generate documentation about your drawing.
Extracting attribute information is an easy way to produce a schedule or bill of materials directly from your drawing data. For example, a facilities drawing might contain blocks representing office equipment. If each block has attributes identifying the model, manufacturer, and cost of the equipment, you can generate a report that estimates the equipment costs.
The Data Extraction wizard guides you through selecting drawings, block instances, and attributes. The wizard can also create a file with a .dxe file extension that contains all the settings for later reuse.
If you extract attribute data to a table, the table is inserted in the current drawing, in the current space (model space or paper space), and on the current layer.
When you update the table, the attribute information is extracted again and the data rows in the table are replaced. If you have included a title row or one or more header rows in the table, they are not replaced during the update.
If you save the data to an external file, the comma-separated (CSV), tab-separated (TXT), Microsoft Excel (XLS), and Microsoft Access (MDB) file formats are available.
When the characters period (.), comma (,), or pound sign (#) are written to an Excel or Access file, they are replaced with their Unicode representation.