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Why Do I Need Spanner?

Good question. Spanner 4 offers these benefits over the AutoCAD cut and paste method (CAPM):

Spanner can be used across a network. This means that one person (an engineer, for example) can use Excel to build an electrical panel schedule or a parts list and another person (an AutoCAD operator, for example) working in another room (or across town) can put the panel schedule or parts list on the drawing. The engineer doesn’t need to know anything about AutoCAD or have access to AutoCAD and the CAD operator doesn’t need to use Excel or even have Excel installed on the CAD computer. The CAPM requires that both Excel and AutoCAD be running on the same machine at the same time.

Spanner sheets are real AutoCAD blocks. They are composed of AutoCAD text and AutoCAD lines and behave like any other AutoCAD block; they can be moved, scaled, rotated and exploded. The CAPM sheets are special OLE objects which behave differently than standard AutoCAD objects and don’t fit well in the AutoCAD environment.

Spanner sheets can be accurately scaled. They are inserted into your drawing with a scale factor just like any other block; you can vary the scale to account for differing plotting scales and you can produce consistent results with text always being the same height. The CAPM allows stretching and scaling of the sheet ‘by eye’ only, you can’t produce consistent results with multiple spreadsheets.

Spanner sheets contain AutoCAD text. This means that you can use the same AutoCAD font within the spreadsheet as you use for the other text on your drawings.

Spanner sheets can be large. With Spanner you can cover an entire drawing with rows and columns (the bigger the sheet the longer the translation process takes, however). The CAPM is limited to an approximately 11" square area. Rows and columns in Excel which are beyond the limit will not appear in the CAPM sheet in AutoCAD.