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On the Refine Data page, you access the Link External Data dialog box; you
can set up a link to an entire Excel spreadsheet, or to a range of rows and
columns, to the extracted data.
Before you can link a spreadsheet, Microsoft Excel needs to be installed on
the same computer on which the data extraction is performed. If Microsoft
Excel is not installed, or if the XLS file is not saved locally on the computer
that is performing the data extraction, a data link cannot be established.
If a linked spreadsheet has been changed, such as a row or column has been
added, the table in your drawing can be updated accordingly using the
DATALINKUPDATE command. Likewise, if a change is made to the table in
the drawing, the linked spreadsheet can be updated using the same command.
NOTE To delete a data link, use the DATALINK command. You cannot delete a
data link from the External References Palette.
Understand Data Linking and Matching
Data linking is the process of selecting a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with the
purpose of merging all or some of its contents with extracted drawing data.
See
Link a Table to External Data on page 1401 for more information about data
linking.
Data matching creates a relationship between two sets of data; the data in a
column from the extracted drawing data and the data in a column from an
Excel spreadsheet.
For example, you have a simple bill of materials (BOM). Three columns of
data are extracted from a drawing. These columns contain data for: Part #,
Revision, and Quantity. You want to include two additional columns of data in
the BOM from a spreadsheet. These columns contain data for Cost and Supplier.
In this example, the spreadsheet contains a column of part numbers labeled
Catalog Number that matches the Part Number column in the extracted data.
In the Link External Data dialog box, you select Part # as the column for the
drawing data and Catalog Number as the column for the external data. Because
there is at least one cell of matching data in the drawing data column and the
external data column, the data extraction feature knows how both sources
are tied together.
You can test if the data matching is valid by clicking the Check Match button
from the Link External Data dialog box. If the match is unsuccessful, a warning
message indicates what the problem is. In some situations, the drawing data
might not link correctly to the data in the spreadsheet. See Data Matching
Validation for more information.
1852 | Chapter 38 Extract Data from Drawings and Spreadsheets