sjb007 wrote:

I've worked in IT all my life, and we have a saying that Excel is the wrong tool for every job, because it is so often misused for doing the strangest of tasks.

Excel is a fantastic tool for many jobs - even to create perfectly adequate planning permission plans/elevations (example image attached). Many people reach, first, for the tools they're familiar with.

sjb007 wrote:

It seems you have decided to embrace Excel and make it the only tool for every job!

You mustn't have read what I wrote earlier in this discussion, here it is again:

After having produced reasonable external planning elevations in Excel it became apparent (a bit too late) just how horrendously complicated the task of producing a series of vertical sections within Excel would be.

sjb007 wrote:

Seriously, I can't imagine trying to do plans in Excel My brain hurts even thinking about it.

You could try it someday. As you can see from my image, basic plans/elevations are not enough to hurt most brains. After that it does though.

sjb007 wrote:

but it'll be a bloody mess

I hope you are not referring to my image - the local planning officer said they are the basis for an entirely adequate application. Out of a little interest, Excel 2016 included support insertion/editing of SVG so I may splash out on a copy [;)]

sjb007 wrote:

As you are retired and abusing a very old version of Excel, is it fair to say that you are reluctant to learn new software? At the end of the day, use what works for you, but...

I've spent that last few days taking a relatively deep dive into Sweet Home 3D.

sjb007 wrote:

I do have to put my IT lecturing hat on for a moment though, and wag my finger at using such old, outdated applications

That was enjoyable - Sweet Home 3D is currently purring along on this Intel(R) Core(TM)i5-3320M CPU @2.60GHZ 4GB RAM and Win7 pro is, pretty much, solid as a rock.

sjb007 wrote:

General support for Office 2007 ended in 2012. That is a more than a decade of potential exposure with zero security updates.

[:))] If you imagine M_S is not harvesting all that ou_tloo_kdo_tcom info for, godonlyknows what, well... in any case, I haven't, er, wasted, a penny on a new machine for 11 years. Some heavy duty photogrammetry calculations could cause me to update somewhat if I ever choose to look into that fascinating topic more thoroughly but, equally, if that was the case I might just look into M_S Azure (or similar) in a bit more detail and rent out a host of remote CPU's for as short a time as possible

sjb007 wrote:

If you insist on using a spreadsheet tool to create plans

As it is, i'd prefer to get everything done in Sweet Home 3D but suspect that will not happen. I'd also like not to have to put the effort into learning FREECAD (which I imagine could do it all) but, if possible, do not wish to expend the energy to do that.

So, if sucking a few bitmaps out of here into the old familiar (Excel) for a bit of finishing work/tidy up gets the job done, let's see.

sjb007 wrote:

perhaps look into the free LibreOffice suite of applications. It will install on Windows, and it operates much like Excel.

Appreciate that (I hope I don't need to though).

sjb007 wrote:

... you can draw into the spreadsheet there too.

That somehow reminds me, out of a little interest, FREECAD has a very interesting/useful Spreadsheet Workbench.

sjb007 wrote:

You are playing Russian Roulette

We all are - TCP/IP encapsulation (and/or whatever follows) makes that so. I'm amazed everytime I login to online banking and there's still a positive balance.

In summary - that "Excel is the wrong tool for every job" is patently untrue. I've used it to great effect over several decades even though the last version of VB / VBA was released in March 2017.

All of what you said was very enjoyable though - so thanks for the comment(s) [B-)]


Emmanuel Puybaret wrote:

Another workaround could be to split the walls, setting the separation of walls in front of the camera.

Excellent. Nice and easy too - always like those

Thanks Emmanuel [;)]