The LAY object

A model created with Studio can interpret the output of Extract Converter.
This means that if the model is placed in an NL Flow workflow downstream of a hexagon corresponding to Extract Converter, the model can exploit the document layout information as well as the extracted text.

The text of the document is treated, with rules or scripting, exactly like normal input text.

Studio IDE has a layout viewer which allows you to graphically see the layout elements.

To exploit the layout information, in the rules language there are the special attributes TITLELEVEL and CELL, while at the scripting level the predefined LAY object is available which exposes methods that allow access to the layout elements of the input document.

Here you can find an example PDF document and corresponding Extract Converter output to use as a reference.

The functionalities of the LAY object are exposed through its methods, which can be grouped depending the layout items:

• Blocks
• Cells
• Fonts
• Pages
• Tables
• Titles
• Words