0:00 For those that have experience using other spreadsheet programs such as Excel, there are many advantages to creating tables there first…and then to inserting into LayOut.

0:10 For this lesson, we’re going to use a simple report generated from our kitchen SketchUp model -

0:15 - which has been provided for you with your exercise files in both CSV and XLSX formats.

0:23 Just a quick note that these two different table formats, that function slightly differently LayOut.

0:30 CSV files, like those generated from SketchUp reports, will insert the whole table directly without any formatting options.

0:39 An XLSX on the other hand, provides some additional benefits, including a prompt upon inserting giving us options to select a cell range and whether to preserve Excel formatting or not.

0:54 If we had multiple sheets in our file, we can also choose which sheet to insert here as well.

0:60 Let’s make sure the cell range is set to ‘All’ and choose to preserve formatting and click ok.

1:08 The other big advantage of working with XLSX files, is that like our SketchUp model reference, LayOut maintains a link to the spreadsheet file on your hard drive.

1:18 So if you need to make any updates or changes, all you have to do is update the table reference either in ‘Document Setup’...

1:27 ...or by right-clicking and selecting “Update Table Teference’. And your changes are now reflected in LayOut.

1:33 As you can see, your changes are now reflected in LayOut.

1:38 Whatever file format you’re working with, you can always match tables styles with an existing table.

1:44 Since we already spent some time formatting the table in the previous example, we can that use that to match styles and we’re good to go.