[drutort]

This tutorial assumes you have an understanding in how to open and edit text files on your computer along with knowing your way around in Microsoft Excel, please do not ask questions regarding these steps, unless there needs to be a clarification to the steps in this tutorial.

Always backup your files, the SC tool library .csv and your edited files so you can always go back and redo things. The example below will deal with the mill tool section only, but should apply to other areas once you identify the “data” by data I mean the section were the tool definition is and not the header or footers that define other things for SC and are not formatted the same with the semicolon as the delimiter.

Getting SprutCAM tool Library CSV file to excel
1. Copy the tool library (data) section that you want to work with, mostly going to be the mill, lathe etc section, only the data stuff, none of the header/footer stuff (starting from ID=INTEGER; and end right before <END MILLING TOOLS> )
(do this in notepad not excel, open the SprutCAM tool Library csv file with notepad)
2. Create a blank text file in notepad
3. Paste the data from step 1 into blank text file
4. Go to edit in notepad, press “replace” type in semicolon to find, replace with comma
5. Save text file, then rename changing the extension from .txt to .csv
6. open this file with excel, it might give you some warnings, ignore those by pressing ok or yes.

Now you will see all the data in columns, rows, cells etc…
You can now sort, edit do what you want, but stay to the format, if you do not follow the proper format you could corrupt your tool library file. (good idea to always have backup)
Best way to not mess up the formatting, is to have created few mill tool types, like drill, mill, engraver, tap etc… so you have a reference point and you can copy that whole row, and then make the changes needed for your tool, this way you should be almost 100% not to mess up.

At this point I would save this .csv into native excel format, as you will export/save as .csv when you are finished with your editing

Getting your Excel file into SprutCAM tool Library CSV file
Now that you have done your edits, and have a excel format file, you want to get the data back to SC tool library format.

1. Go to File save as in excel, and save the tool data as comma delimited .csv Keep your original excel file too.
2. Now right click on this .csv file made, and open with notepad
3. Once opened with notepad we will now do a few find and replace commands
4. Go to edit and click on Replace in the find what type , as in comma and in replace with ; semicolon
After this step it is almost done, one issue remains if you have any quotes as in representing inches with a single “ excel CSV format will put that whole cell in quotes, and thus adding double quotes
5. to get rid of double quotes we will go to edit tab Replace in the find what we type “” 2 quotes replace it with say ! then go to edit replace and find the single quote “ and replace it with nothing just leave the replace with area blank, it will remove the single quote.
6. now we want that double quote which we turned into ! to be a single “ we do one last Replace find what type ! and type “ single quote in the replace with
7. take this data copy all, and go to your SC tool library CSV file, back in the same section, and paste it in the proper area save the file. see pictures for help
8. Go to SC and load the new tool library CSV, make sure things are good, hit save SC, if all is good SC will format that tool data back with all those spaces and easy to read, this confirms that all has worked.

Now you can do these steps as need, when you want to make changes; always keep your original files just in case, the excel file and original SC tool library backed up (copies)

[drutort]

I looked at the lathe section, and it follows same format, so this should work just as well for the lathe section, now other users should chime in on router, laser, water jet, robotics, but im pretty sure that its exact same way.

I just did a few back and forth from SC to excel, excel to SC and all has been working flawlessly with these steps, much better then my previous way. This is more command type which you simply do find and replace a few times, and it gets really easy doing those steps, copy paste save and done!

[MichaelHenry]

Thanks for the update. I took the liberty of pasting the text and images into a Word document in case anybody finds that useful.

[drutort]

Cool thx, maybe someone can do a quick video of this? I would I just do not have any time

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[Uman]

Nice work drutort and thanks for sharing and thanks MichaelHenery for consolidating the info.
Like others, I maintain a notebook of experiences and how-to's.
Always open to learn more about SC, especially the tool library.

[MichaelHenry]

Cool thx, maybe someone can do a quick video of this? I would I just do not have any time

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

And I've no video skills, plus my wife tells me that I mumble.