Files stay where they are
No second archive to keep aligned: the catalog points to the files you have in Flow. Move or rename a photo and the link holds; the same image can serve several products.
Catalogs · Flow
Your catalog, from the files you already have.
Product data sits in a spreadsheet, photos and drawings in a folder. Choose that folder and Flow proposes the catalog: products, sections, images in the right place. Then you export it, and when the spreadsheets change you realign it.
Weeks of layout, in a few steps
The catalog is made once a year and takes weeks: gathering data, cropping photos, laying out pages, checking codes one by one, and starting over when the price list changes. Here you already have the data and the photos: choose the folder, say what each column becomes, export. And next year's edition is not a job from scratch, it is an update.
Three things that change the work
Technical drawings come in on their own
Flow already opens DWG, STEP, INDD, Office and PDF: the dimensioned drawing or the 3D view becomes a catalog image without anyone exporting it by hand.
When the data changes, it realigns
The catalog remembers where it comes from and with which recipe. You update the spreadsheet, ask to realign, and before confirming you see what would change: manual corrections are not lost.
From folder to catalog
- 01
Choose the folder
From the folder menu or from “New catalog”. Flow looks inside and proposes which sheets are product tables and which row holds the headers.
- 02
Say what each column becomes
Code, name, price, dimensions. The recommended choices are already on: you only change what doesn't fit. If prices are in a separate price list, Flow matches them by code.
- 03
Match the images
If the file is named after the item code, Flow works it out on its own. Otherwise you teach it with a rule, and it applies to the whole folder.
What comes out
-
Laid-out PDF
Cover, table of contents, one chapter per section, and at the end an index by item code with page numbers. Not a printed web page: a catalog.
- link
Web catalog
A protected link, with password and expiry if needed. Light pages, with search and filters, easy to browse on a phone too. It shows only the published edition: nobody sees a product left half-finished.
- IDML
InDesign package
For professional catalog layout: data and images ready for InDesign Data Merge, with links that stay live in the designer's Flow folder.
- 1 product
Single sheet
The same engine with just one product, for the data sheet you send to a client.
Choose the look and see it right away
A cover from three templates, title and subtitle in their own colors, your logo, a typeface from some sixty families. How many products per page, whether each section starts on a new page, what goes in the header and footer. Next to the choices is a preview of the real pages, updating as you choose.
You always know what's missing
Each product shows its completeness as a percentage and a plain list of what's missing: “German description missing”, “main photo missing”. Families decide which fields a chair needs and which a lamp needs, and you can export just what is ready.
And then it's a Flow file
The exported catalog lands in your files: every edition is a new version of the same document. From there the usual things apply: history, the protected link, review with approval before printing, signature.
Want to see it on your products?
Write to us: we'll start from one of your folders and show you what comes out.