AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 Bible

Chapter 20. Working with External Databases

The AutoCAD database connectivity feature enables you to communicate with an external database from within AutoCAD.

Note

AutoCAD LT does not include the database connectivity feature. This entire chapter applies to AutoCAD only.

Database connectivity is a powerful way to link drawing objects with data and is more flexible than using block attributes. With database connectivity, you can link data in an external database to any object in a drawing. In this chapter, I show you that database connectivity does not have to be as difficult as it often sounds.

Many AutoCAD users maintain databases separately from their drawings. You can work directly with your data by linking the rows of the database tables to objects in your drawings. The drawing objects thus become intelligent and carry these links with them in the drawing. You can also change data, such as a price or a part number, from within AutoCAD, and have that change automatically applied and available in all drawing objects that are linked to that database item. Finally, you can create labels in your drawing, based on the data in the database.

Note

You can link to external Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and comma-delimited (CSV) files in a table. For more information, see Chapter 13. Using that feature, you can view the external data and change it (both in the table and in Excel). Your table always displays the current data in the spreadsheet. However, the external database access feature described ...