Develop a plug-in that can input SketchUP data to Excel for the purpose of Quoting, is there anyone?

Hi Developers,

We ar currently looking to hire someone to develop a Plugin for us to integrate Excel document with Sketchup Pro. If this is something that you or someone else can help with please let me know:

“Excel quoting tool integration with Google Sketchup Pro”

I use Google Sketchup Pro to draw roof diagrams and measurements using top view / 2d (not on perspective). I use an Excel quoting tool (that we developed) to generate quotes. Currently I manually input the Sketchup measurements (Starter, Eave, Ridge, Valley, Roof Area) into the first page of my Excel quoting tool from which all of the other pages of the Excel document calculate and flow. What I want to be able to do is have Sketchup automatically input the measurements into the first page of my Excel Quoting tool. For example, when I measure a roof “valley”, Sketchup will automatically input that measurement into the first page of my Excel Quoting tool under the “Valley” column. So a Sketchup Plugin needs to be developed using Ruby I think. That is pretty much it. I know that there is a way to have Sketchup export into a generic CSV file but that is no good because I want it to communicate directly with my Excel quoting tool so that I don’t have to cut and paste the CSV file into my Excel quoting tool.

If this is something you can do please let me know and with estimated cost.

Ps. if you were to explain things please do it in a Layman’s term :sweat_smile:

Trimble has been the owner of SketchUp for a number of years.

If this is an extension you’re looking to develop to market you may want to take a look at what is available on the Extension Warehouse first.

A quick search (and some from memory) as follows, in no particular order:

Take a look, some may or may not be suitable to your intended use.

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Profile Builder 3 no longer has the quantifier ability integrated. Now it is an Extension ‘on its own’ and it has the abilty to import and export Excel sheets( or parts of it) It is called Quantifier Pro:

Many companies move away from the use of Excel (or more generically “spreadsheets”) in automated processes:

  1. It is designed for manual interactions which are error prone (users mistype, use wrong units, move cells around).
  2. Any Excel parser or adapter will be rather inflexible since it assumes cell positions that are very specific to a customer’s spreadsheet layout.
  3. It is not a programming tool; more complex math functions are hardly readable, maintainable and edits not trackable (version control, who changed that function with what intention).

Similarly to developing a SketchUp extension for existing spreadsheets, you could consider redeveloping a new quoting tool as a real software, or making an existing quoting tool fit your purpose.

Maybe you have increased flexibility if the SketchUp extension exports the data into an interim format (csv, json), that your quoting tool (the current or any future one) would import.

I did not know that, thanks for the heads up!

How about an excel macro to place all the data in the downloaded generic report to the correct positions? That is use the native tools in sketchup and excel. Components (DCs?) to measure, generate report, VBA in excel to sort.

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Thanks for the recommendation guys! and I really appreciate it. I have looked through all the possible plug-ins that we could use in this project but the thing is, my employer wants something that could generate quotes from an existing excel that they have developed and they want to incorporate it with Sketchup where we use to draw diagrams for roofing, they do not want to change anything in the excel and not wanting to do anything with a CSV file because they still need to cut and paste the file to excel, they want it directly.

If any Plug-in developers reading this, and you think you can do something like this, we can discuss it more and could explain it to you thoroughly.

We are willing to pay for your estimated cost for this project.:blush:

An VBA macro would do all the data transfer at a press of a button, no cut, no paste

Hello,

Can you please give me an insight of how am i going to slide in Sketchup Measurements with VBA Macro Excel to make a quote without ruining the quoting tool that we are using. I would appreciate your help.

I dont know anything about it but i have watched few clips on it.

It will not ruin the excel workbook you are using, rather just place data automatically as you would manually input. The key to any automation is to have data produced consistently, both programs are very limited in AI. So the drawing elements or methods need to done in a set way. The delimiters could be layers, colors / material, DC attributes, components or groups. The report can be set to filter some of the data. The excel VBA macro would do some filtering and changes to place the data in the cells, formatted as required. I private message my email, so you can forward the cover or input sheet (only, the rest is probably intellectual copyright) for data input and an example of your sketchup. Then I can give some recommendations and a rudimental VBA macro.

Hi there,

I’ve created multiple extensions in the past that have live bi-directional communication with Excel.I found an older youtube video on my channel showing that I manage to fill SketchUp data in Excel and then, whenever a selection changes in Excel, highlight the depending SketchUp entity.

Exporting loads of data live from SketchUp to excel, injecting live changes from Excel back to SketchUp, I’ve done it all before. Only dependecy for this: Windows only.

Please feel free to contact me.

EDIT: By now I have released an extension that is able to generate .xlsx files: [Deprecated] Excel Reports - without the need for csv