Print at Dec 16, 2025, 9:20:03 PM

Posted by NIMAN at Nov 26, 2023, 8:13:41 PM
Re: Side view plug-in

I wasn't insulting the end result, more pointing out that it will be painful. A simple example... In Excel you have all your drawn elements on the top of the spreadsheet as just one big collection of drawn objects.

My previous Excel elevation has several "groups". Unsophisticated but perfectly straightforward to achieve, relatively, useful results relatively quickly. The previous image gable wall elevation darker brick portion being built from a single (rectangular) brick/copied twice / both selected / copied twice etc to form a single course. The course grouped / copied x 10. This copied x 2 and a wall is constructed in a minute or two. Layer management (of these groups) is also unsophisticated via Excel "send to front/send forward/send to back/send backward" but for a, relatively, small number of layers it is fairly straightforward to manage (while the "select objects" menu item and a little VBA permits identification of hidden objects in a straightforward fashion also).

By the way, if you draw on a worksheet and print - the output scale is distorted. You must print from a chartsheet to maintain that not to mention that a print size must be chosen before the dimension property of the chartsheet can be set to the desired size (A3/A2 etc)

It is a lot of overhead compared to Sweet Home 3D but familiarity, of course, breeds speed



Your screenshot looks good

Cheers smile


then Excels abilities as a technical drawing tool.

I haven't looked into it in any detail but it seems that VBA can be used to produce relatively sophisticated results (see commercial "Excel Draw" for example)


Getting them all onto a standard A2 at proper 1:50 scale with a proper info block is a lot more work and requires other software.

This is an Excel A3 chartsheet draft pdf used as the basis for a building notice application a few months ago - I hope you like that too?
https://i.postimg.cc/DyQmHwZ4/A3-Excel.png

This is not about the relative power of your PC, or Microsoft having God mode on your PC. This is about old unsupported software having unpatched vulnerabilities that malicious 3rd parties can exploit. They want three things from you:

  • your money,
  • your personal info (that they can sell for money)
  • your internet (that they can use to attack other systems for even more money)


If we think we are ahead in the evening it'll be reversed by the next morning - for the foreseeable I will, nervously, rely on scheduled AOMEI disc image backup and 2 step authentication everywhere else.

From my pespective, this is not the place to have further discussion on who is the bigger thief (Big IT/Small crook).

On an application difficulty rating of 1-10 with SH3D being a 3 or 4, FreeCAD I'd put at a 10. Learning to use it to create final plans would be a huge time sink.

Hence my current Sweet Home 3D focus.

But then, you are retired wink

Yes, but the real goal must be success in the physical project

shock You must have one of these angel

With upcoming Global CBDC implementations you'll have something dissimilar too (or starve) batting eyelashes

it is a bit of hyperbole, but I've seen people use Excel for managing a large project instead of MS Project when they already had access to the real thing! As dates moved they would sit in meetings painstakingly colouring in the cells of their gantt chart styled spreadsheet as everyone else waited... And don't get me started on "critical" business processes being coded up in Excel and saved on that one "computer genius" persons local hard drive... d oh

A reminder here of that last migration project from an MM3000 to SAP ERP. Thanks for reminding me just how happy I am to be out of that "rat race" wink