2011

■ External database — Imported data is added to the external database table
as new records.
■ External database, link only — If you do not need to add the data to the
external database, you can import just the links to the data. When you
import links only, the link from the object to the external data are
maintained, but the external database is not modified. This is much faster
than importing the entire record. This is a good option when importing
SHP data.
See also:
■
Converting Data From Other Formats to Drawing Objects (page 377)
■ To import objects with links to an external database (page 434)
■
Setting Up Object Data (page 198)
To specify the data to import
1 Click Insert tab ➤ Import panel ➤ Map Import .
2 In the Import dialog box (page 1711), review the settings in the Data
column.
3 To change the setting for a layer, click in the Data field for the layer to
change. Click
.
4 In the
Attribute Data dialog box (page 1699), select an option:
■ If you do not want to import data, click Do Not Import Attribute Data
and close the dialog box.
■ To import data as object data, click Create Object Data and enter a
name for the object data table or select an existing object data table.
Select Add Unique Key Field to create a unique key for each incoming
record automatically.
Click Select Fields. In the
Object Data/External Database Mapping
dialog box
(page 1732), map incoming fields to object data fields.
■ To import data to an external database, click Add To Database Table
and select a link template.
To import only the link data, select Create Link Only.
426 | Chapter 3 Bringing In Data