ExcelImportPlugin

Manual
Copyright

Copyright © 2020 CAXperts GmbH. All Rights Reserved.

Including software, file formats, and audio-visual displays; may be used pursuant to applicable software
licence agreement; contains confidential and proprietary information of CAXperts and/or third parties
which is protected by copyright law, trade secret law, and international treaty, and may not be provided
or otherwise made available without proper authorisation.

Restricted Rights Legend

Rights reserved under the copyright laws of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Warranties and Liabilities

All warranties given by CAXperts about equipment or software are set forth in your purchase contract,
and nothing stated in, or implied by, this document or its contents shall be considered or deemed a
modification or amendment of such warranties. CAXperts believes the information in this publication
is accurate as of its publication date.

The information and the software discussed in this document are subject to change without notice and
are subject to applicable technical product descriptions. CAXperts is not responsible for any error that
may appear in this document.

The software discussed in this document is furnished under a licence and may be used or copied only
in accordance with the terms of this licence. THE USER OF THE SOFTWARE IS EXPECTED TO MAKE
THE FINAL EVALUATION AS TO THE USEFULNESS OF THE SOFTWARE IN HIS OWN ENVIRONMENT.

Trademarks

CAXperts is a registered trademark of CAXperts GmbH. Intergraph, the Intergraph logo, SmartSketch,
FrameWorks, SmartPlant, INtools, MARIAN, PDS, IGDS, RIS and IntelliShip are registered trademarks of
Intergraph Corporation. IGDS file formats ©1987-1994 Intergraph Corporation. Microsoft and Windows
are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Bentley, the Bentley logo “B,” and MicroStation are
registered trademarks of Bentley Systems, Inc. ISOGEN is a registered trademark of Alias Limited. Other
brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Version: 2021-02-03
Table of Contents
I. Introduction ........................................................................................... 3
II. Setup ..................................................................................................... 3
Devices and operating systems
Software and licensing requirements
Setup procedure
III. Usage..................................................................................................... 4
File name and placement
Attribute and Value Definition
Activating the ExcelImportPlugin
Configuration file
IV. Contact .................................................................................................. 6
Helpdesk
Introduction
The ExcelImportPlugin is used to sideload additional attribute data not included in the initial source files.
This feature helps to implement data from sources other than the original authoring systems and can
contain any information, e.g., from third-party-sources or databases.

Setup
Devices and operating systems
• Desktop: Windows 7 or later

• Server: Windows 2008 – 2016

Software and licensing requirements

The ExcelImportPlugin requires an active API/SDK licence for the UniversalPlantViewer Builder.

Setup procedure
The ExcelImportPlugin is not an executable and comes without a setup routine. After the file download,
unpack the content of the container (zip) to one of the directories listed.

For current user use only:

%AppData%\CAXperts\Universal Plant Viewer Builder\Plugins\

For all users (administrator rights might be required):

%programfiles%\CAXperts\Universal Plant Viewer Builder\Plugins\

If the folder Plugins does not exist, it needs to be created manually.

On most Windows systems, the files must be activated after download before they can be used. Right-click the files one
by one, select properties and in the lower part of the properties window, click on “unlock” and “Apply”.

CAXPERTS EXCELIMPORT PLUGIN - FEBRUARY 2021 3

Usage
File name and placement
The Attributes are defined in Excel files placed in a folder of the mandatory name ExcelImport. This folder
must be placed in the directory containing the .upvc / .upvm files to be used. The files in this folder will
automatically be considered after activation of the plugin in the UniversalPlantViewer Builder settings (see
section Activating the ExcelImportPlugin).

If the folder is not present, the folder defined in the configuration file will be used (see section Configuration
file). If that folder is not found either, the plugin will be ignored in the building process. For projects without
a .upvc file (IntelliPID only), please use the file Empty.upvc included in the download or define a custom
location in the configuration file.

The names of the Excel files contained in the folder are free to choose. The files are processed in
alphabetical order. If you are using Source Attributes that are defined in a different file to be imported,
please make sure that the respective file is being loaded previously, e.g., by setting a prefix (01_, 02_, 03_,
etc.) in front of the file name.

Attribute and Value Definition

The Attributes are defined in an Excel file following a fixed syntax, using sheet “Import” for 3D data (see
Fig. 1.1), and sheet “IntelliPID_Import” for data to be imported to IntelliPID (see fig. 1.2), a template file is
included in the download.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Source Attribute (UPVx) – The Source Attribute to look for when adding a new attribute

Source Value (UPVx) – Specifies a condition for the Source Attribute value

New Attribute – You can add new attributes by adding columns to the file

New Value – The values for an attribute are described in the same column below

By choosing a Source Attribute that applies to multiple objects, the new attribute is added to all objects
containing that attribute with the defined Source Value (Wildcard * is supported).

CAXPERTS EXCELIMPORT PLUGIN - FEBRUARY 2021 4

Activating the ExcelImportPlugin
To import the additional attributes and values, the ExcelImport Plugin must be activated first. Go to Tools
→ Settings in the menu bar and select the “Plugins” tab. Select the “UPVPluginExcelImport” plugin from
available plugins (fig. 2-1), transfer it to the used plugins by clicking on the [>] button (fig. 2-2) and confirm
your selection with [OK] (fig. 2-3).

UPVPluginExcelImport

Figure 2

Configuration file
The plugin is configurable through a configuration file named UPVPluginExcelImport.xml. This file is
located alongside the .dll of the plugin (see chapter “Setup procedure”). It contains three values that can
be set for configuration (fig. 3).

Figure 3

Setting Description

Folder If no ExcelImport folder is found in the .upvc-files folder of the project, the
folder defined in this option is used. If this folder does not exist, the plugin
is ignored.

SheetName Specifies the sheet of the Excel files contained in the ExcelImport folder to
be used for importing attributes to 3D (Default: Import)

SheetNameIntelliPID Specifies the sheet of the Excel files contained in the ExcelImport folder to
be used for importing attributes to 3D (Default: IntelliPID_Import)

Debug Activates the debugging mode with detailed information on the building
process.
0 for deactivated, 1 for activated (Default: 0)

CAXPERTS EXCELIMPORT PLUGIN - FEBRUARY 2021 5

Contact
Contact CAXperts’ support by email, online, or phone:

CAXperts GmbH
Carl-Zeiss-Ring 4
85737 Ismaning
Germany

https://www.caxperts.com/contact/
Phone: +49 (89) 969772-0
Email: info@caxperts.com

Helpdesk
Available Monday to Friday 08.00 a.m. – 5.00 pm (UTC +1)
Phone: +49 (89) 969772-250
support@caxperts.com

CAXPERTS EXCELIMPORT PLUGIN - FEBRUARY 2021 6