8 replies to this topic

[afd]

Excel has been used extensively as a spreadsheet for complex calculations and spreadsheet solutions. I observed that Art had used it many times to communicate drawings and set about using the drawing toolbar. I learned that excel has a powerful drawing tool and with help from Art I found out that it is easy and interesting.

I am attaching a sheet in which I have used the group, order, select objects and autoshapes from the drawing toolbar to draw a simple exchanger and pipeline.

Hope Art Montemayor can shed more light on excel expertise so that all of us can excel in "EXCEL"

Afd

Attached Files

•  excel_draw.xls   19KB   394 downloads

[Art Montemayor]

Thank you, AFD.

My intent has always been to help others communicate engineering matter in an efficient, accurate, and timely manner. I learned how to draw in Excel from another engineer some years back, and I found that it was even more efficient than what I thought at first. With more practice I could certainly get much better.

Excel is an exceptional tool in that it is almost "universal" in use. That means that its efficiency and timeliness is built-in. Almost anyone with a PC can receive your engineering drawings via email or downloaded and read them instantly --- without having to have another, expensive or complicated software program already loaded on their machine! This is not the case with AutoCad, Hysys, Visio, etc. etc. .....etc.

I definitely recommend all engineering students to take the time and look carefully through the attached Excel File that I have contributed to get a sampling of what you can do without making any other investment other than time. And I am sure that you can certainly do it better than I can!

Even young graduate engineers should seriously look at what graphic material they can create and work in within Excel. You guys would be severely surprised at the number of multi-million $ projects I have justified and rammed through with no other tool than just Excel. I not only use it for detailed calculations, but I also rely on it for detailed engineering scopes of work, specification sheets, databases, charts, and even detailed PFDs and P&IDs at the front-end of engineering -- long before I have a draftsman assigned to my projects. I assemble all my project calculations, sketches, drawings, graphs, and databases in Excel workbooks that contain all my project inputs and outputs. Everything I do in a project can be found in one, simple, compacted Excel workbook. I don't think I have to explain to you what a tremendous organizational tool that can be - especially when someone in the middle east, Africa, or Asia wants to know exactly what you have done and how you can explain it. I can do that as fast as it takes to send an email.

I hope everyone gets the picture of how much worth this ability can add to your engineering strengths now and in the future.

I hope it helps you out by communicating better, faster, more accurately, and with better precision.

 Engineering_Art__Rev1.XLS   441.5KB   419 downloads

[JoeWong]

Mr. Montemayor,

You are really a great engineer...

Respect.







regards,

JoeWong

[aluma]

Thanks for the excel sheet.

Mr Art has been a great inspiration and the least we can do in return is to strive towards the same level of proficiency in Chemical Engineering.

[Dharmesh]

Thanks Art,

Now, for the first time I have adopted Excel for such kind of drawings. Earlier, I have used Excel only for some data management and calculations. Such kind of things inspire people like me to learn something new.

I am proud to respect you Sir. You inspire me.

Regards,

Dharmesh

[gkennedy34]

All,

I've been working in the industry for 10+ years and can tell you from what I've seen of Art's replies and his work (his "Tank Relief and N2 Blanketing" spreadsheets come to mind) that he is an excellent engineer.

Thanks for supporting your fellow engineers, Art, and for helping the students with your wisdom.

gk

[aluma]

For those who have Microsoft Visio, I find it easier and more time-efficient to do the drawing in Visio and copy them into Excel.

In Excel, I do the following:

1. ctrl+V
2. on the diagram, right-click >grouping>ungroup . This should give a message like: 'This is an imported picture not a group. Do you want to convert it to a microsoft office drawing object?' Click 'yes'.
3. Now you can make the little tweaks with Excel and send it anyone that has MS Excel(Visio not needed). Note: to make changes to each individual element of the drawing, you still need to 'ungroup'.

Goodluck

PS: I've attached a little PFD .xls file that was created with Visio.

[Qalander (Chem)]

Thanks my Dear Art.

This is a splendid engineering support actvity shared by you and I definitely needed this badly as I am not that conversant with Excel's Excellent capability.

Best regards
Qalander

[abc420]

Thank you very much, Sir.