There was a thread recently on SAG-L. Someone was having trouble passing data from a program to a Layout to a Map.
There was an issue of Inside Natural that addressed this subject and showed an interesting application (pre processing rules) of Layouts.
If you are not totally comfortable with the concept and implementation of Layouts, I would read that article prior to the Pre Processing article.
steve
IN Vol 15 No 4.pdf (222 KB)