Excel suggestions: 'live viewer' and 'specific cell selection'

Features & Ideas
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Hi!

I was happy too see some new developments in the Excel connector in the latest release!

In my opinion it should not be underestimated how many companies/people are using excel for all sorts of work. The ‘simpel’ interface makes it very approachable (everybody knows excel).

A few suggestions for the excel connector:

  1. Select multiple specific cells to send
    At the moment it is only possible to send 1 'data ‘range’.
    However when you have a large excel sheet (e.g. which is also used for other purposes),and there are only 5 parameters which you would like to send, but they are very far apart, there is an uneccesary large database which you would have to send. ((e.g. A:ZZ5000),instead of just 5 datacells…)
    long story short:
    Would it be possible to send: ‘multiple’ data ranges, or even ‘specific data cells’? (e.g. cell D2, F312, Z54)?

  2. Auto send option in excel
    Would it be possible to create an ‘auto read & send’ toggle in the excel connector?
    This way you can very fast explore/test several inputs (whithout having to ‘manually/press ‘send’ every time’. (e.g. so if you change a specific excel cell → this ‘new’ value is automatically being send

  3. Viewer
    I really like the new viewer!
    Would it be possible to create an ‘auto/update’ previewer? (automatically updating if there is something changed. (now you have to manually right click → press update/boring if you have to do it often :wink:

  4. Excel viewer default = Perspective
    I noticed that the default excel viewer is in ‘perspective’.
    Unfortunately in my experience the ‘prespective’ mode is significantly more ‘fragile’ than the ‘ortho mode’. Especially when you zoom in closly to some elements and rotate the view, there are some stange things happening… losing the view of some elements (same holds for the online viewer btw).
    Would it be possible to make a toogle in the excel viewer to ‘ortho’ (or to make it default? :slight_smile: )

  5. Online viewer / auto update
    Would it be possible to maken an ‘auto update’ toggle in the web browser?
    At the moment if there is something updated, you have to be super fast to click on the bottom ‘text, that there is something changed’ (which is only tere for a few seconds). Otherwise you will have to go to your menu and click again on the stream, or am I missing something?

Just let me know what you think! :slight_smile:
Thanks again, and looking forward!

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Thanks for the suggestion and praises @GH007 !

We’ll take them into account when working on the next iterations of the connector cc @connor @Pavol
It would help us a lot understanding the use cases that brought you to suggest them in the first place if you could share? What are the workflows and people involved? Thanks!

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Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

My idea is to be able to modify/change the ‘parameters’ in Excel → and automatically run a GH file.
This way the ‘end-user’ doesn’t have to be an experienced GH user. (I noticed, how simple it also looks for us, GH still scares alot of people).

  • additional advantage is that you would be able to combine the power of (existing) excel sheets/tools with the power of GH. (making some sort of hybrid Excel/GH script).

This way Excel will act as a ‘low key’ entrance, to use a GH script/file on the backend. (everybody knows how to use ecel).
I got a feeling this would make alot of GH files alot more acceable for more people.

I think Speckle is heading the right way, however when it comes to the excel connector, I think there are a few (I think minor) addition needed to be able to send, send (only) specific data you would like to send (or receive).
so to be more presize: I would like to send the data in the excel, from the following cells, A1 +B504 + Y304. At the moment it is only possible to send 1 big ‘range’.
(one step further is to be able to select data from several workbooks/sheets: sheetA cell A1 + sheetB H105 etc…)

What are your thoughts?

Thanks again :slight_smile:

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I’m not the Excel expert but the way I see it what you ask for is doable. We could allow to send multiple “named ranges” and create a speckle object out of them.

@connor what do you think about this? I think we discussed something similar in a call.

Grasshopper already expects this behaviour so it should work with no changes on my side.

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