I am trying to import some wire data from excel but I am a little bit confused on how to set up the excel spreadsheet. The help file lists "three" sets of column headings depending on if you want to import a cable library, wire library, or ribbon cable library. The confusing part, and why I put "three" in quotes, is that it actually lists four sets of column headings.
The cable library section is divided into two parts, cable library and core library. Should I be putting these columns in two different spreadsheets? I played with this before in 2011 (I recently upgraded to 2012 and lost all the old data, which was incorrect anyway) and when I imported my spreadsheet then I had the common columns, Cable Name, Outer Diameter, and Minimum Bed Radius, combined into just one column each, but I found that my wires were always giving me errors when it checked the min bend radius even though it was greater than the min radius I had assigned to the wire, but not the cable, which makes me think it was a mistake to combine the columns. I have attached the old spreadsheet to better illustrate what I mean.
If anyone has experience with this or a sample spreadsheet I would really appreciate the help!
Argh, figured it out again I think. I re-read the help file, and although I still think the wording is confusing, the part I am focusing on is "All column headers are required". So, you have to put all the info for the cables, the wires, and the ribbon cables in the same spreadsheet. If you want to import more wires later using the excel spreadsheet method KEEP THE SAME SPREADSHEET, because you will need to add them there and re-import the whole thing.
So the workflow is:
1. Create the excel spreadsheet and include all the column headers that correspond to the type of libraries you want to include (cable, wire, ribbon). You do not need to make duplicate headers for anything that appears in two or more sections (see attached sample).
2. Fill in the required data, save the spreadsheet.
3. Open the Routing Library Manager, then select Cable Wire Library Wizard.
4. Choose the Import a library in Excel format and click next.
5. Browse to the location where you saved your spreadsheet. When you click open you will may get an error message that tells you which column headers it could not find. Take note of these or copy them into notepad for reference. Now you will have to edit the "Excel Column Name" section to match what you have in the spreadsheet to each require property. After you have done this for cables and cores be sure to switch to wires and ribbon cables as needed and edit those fields as well.
6. Once your header names are up to date, browse to your spreadsheet again. If you get an error again even though you corrected the header names, exit the routing library manager and start again. Seems to be a bug, but your new header names should still be there. Click next.
7. On the cable wire library screen you can check through the info to make sure it matches your spreadsheet. Clicking on the different cables shows the info for the cores in the table below. You can select the drop down menu to change to wires or ribbon cables. Make any necessary edits.
8. At this point I hit "save as" and saved a copy of the spreadsheet in the routing folder, don't worry about this if you already saved the spreadsheet somewhere safe. When you hit finish, it will prompt you again to save, this time change the file type to XML and save it in the routing\electrical folder. If you do not name it "cable.xml" to replace the default make sure you update the path under "routing file locations and settings" --> "cable wire library" to your new file name and location.
Hopefully this will help the next routing newbie, and now when I forget how I did this I can find it again!