After you have selected the drawings from which to extract data, the next step is
to specify which objects and their properties to extract. This is the data that is
output to a table or to an external file. By default, objects are extracted from both
model space and paper space, including objects in blocks and xrefs. Using the Data
Extraction – Additional Settings dialog box, you can change the default settings.

The Select Objects page in the Data Extraction wizard displays a list of objects.
From this page, you can use filters to sort by object type (block or non-block). You
can narrow the list of objects even more. For example, you can display only those
blocks that have attributes.

Objects and their properties are always extracted using the world coordinate system
(WCS).

Select Object Properties to Be Extracted

After you have selected the objects, the next step is to specify which properties
to extract.

The Select Properties page in the Data Extraction wizard displays a list of properties
in columns from the selected objects from the Select Objects page. This is where you
make a final selection of the properties from which data will be extracted and output
to a columnar format. Using predefined category filters such as general, geometry,
or attribute, you can narrow the property list.

Property Categories for Filtering a Data Extraction

Extracted properties are categorized for easier filtering. For example, if you wanted
to see only those properties pertaining to geometry, select the Geometry filter on
the Select Properties page.

The following is a list of the filter categories for the extracted properties displayed
on the Select Properties page. The categories include

• 3D Visualization. Materials.
• Attribute. Attribute tags.
• Drawing. File name, location, size, when created and modified.
• Dynamic Block. Dynamic block properties.
• General. Color, hyperlink, layer, linetype, and so on.
• Geometry. Area, start point, end point, radius, and so on.
• Misc. Dimension style and block name.
• Pattern. Hatch pattern name, angle, scale, spacing, and so on.
• Table. Table style.
• Text. Single line text, multiline text, dimension text, and so on.

Property Names

After the property data is extracted, the default property names are used as the column
labels in the data grid (example: Width, Length, Area, and so on). You can change
these property names so that column labels are replaced with a name you specify. For
example, if you extracted the length property of lines, but the column label needs
to indicate the data refers to distance, you can change Length to Distance on the Display Name column on the Select Properties page.

The display name for the length property for polylines is renamed Distance.

Property Data and Unit Settings

If you select multiple drawings as the data source, and the unit setting is not the
same in all the drawings, a message displays that there is a mismatch of drawing units.
In this situation, the current drawing’s unit settings are used for converting the
numerical value of properties.

For example, if the current drawing’s unit setting is set to inches, and another drawing’s unit setting is set to millimeters, the extracted numerical data is automatically converted to inches. This happens
even if the current drawing is not included in the data source.

Property Types

Each property value is treated as either text or numerical data. For example, properties
such as radius or length, are treated as numerical data. Attribute numerical values
are treated as text. This is important to consider when using formula columns to perform
arithmetic functions on extracted data.

Non-Uniformly Scaled Blocks

Objects in blocks that were not scaled uniformly cannot be extracted because the
numerical values may not be correct or useful. For example, if a circle is in a block
that was inserted with a non-uniform scale factor, the object is no longer a true
circle.

A dialog box will display during the extraction that indicates blocks were found that
were not uniformly scaled, and the objects within those blocks are not included in
the extraction.

Annotative Objects

The property data for annotative objects is extracted using the current annotation
scale setting.