I know a "little" bit about Autocad.
I actually taught a college class many years ago, but lots has changed since
then and I have not kept up... (It was before WINDOWS!!!)
The autocad files  have a .dwg extension.
Autocad used to use a programming language derived from the LISP language.
Because they are a CAD application, they had MANY custom functions, they called
their version AutoLISP. I even wrote some extraction programs using AutoLISP
back in the '80s.
Since then, they jumped on the band-wagon and began using Objects, Visual Basic,
ADO, etc.
they also now have a data  Extraction Wizard that is designed specifically to
allow you to link AutoCad tables to external files linked to Excel.
Unfortunately, I think Tim needs to find an AutoCAD user group and address his
question there.
the problem is to get the AutoCAD data out where Excel can get to it.
I found several places that showed how to use AutoCAD's Extraction Wizard, but
that works great on one file, or even two. I think I could spend a weekend and
maybe get 50 or 100... but
if Tim works in a an environment where the number of files is large (I have
140,000) then
he needs to automate the process, which means he needs an AutoCAD expert...
Once he gets the data, out of AutoCAD, THEN I think we can do LOTS to help him
manipulate the data. But the .dwg format is not a format that we can get to
without the AutoCAD application.