Ten-step process to make sheets work for you

CADalyst, May, 2004 by Heidi Hewett

At first glance, the new Sheet Set Manager may seem overwhelming. You don't have to learn and implement all of its functionality at once. Start using it immediately to access, manage, and share current drawing projects, and as you get comfortable navigating with the Sheet Set Manager, customize your existing templates and blocks to include fields. Use this ten-step process to go from the simplest to the most complex capabilities with minimal disruption to your current workflow.

STEP 1. Create a new sheet set from existing drawing layouts. First, import your existing drawing layouts into a new sheet set. Using the Create Sheet Set wizard, you can emulate your project's folder structure and automatically organize your sheets into subsets. The Sheet List tab displays sheets and subsets, and a right-click menu provides access to most of the functionality needed to manage and share your sheets.

STEP 2. Organize sheets and subsets. Sheets in the sheet list are pointers to layouts in drawing files. Subsets let you organize those sheets into visual clusters. You can create any number of subsets or nested subsets and then drag and drop the sheets to organize them. When you select a sheet or subset in the sheet list, you can view detailed information or display a preview image. You can remove sheets from the sheet set without moving or deleting the source files. To track the contents of your sheet set, you can insert a sheet index into your title sheet. As you make changes to the sheet list, the sheet index automatically updates.

STEP 3. Open drawings. From the Sheet Set Manager you can double-click on any sheet to quickly open the associated drawing. You don't need to know the name of the drawing file or where it's located in your directory.

STEP 4. Add sheets to a sheet set. Add sheets to an existing sheet set by importing layouts from existing drawings or by creating new sheets from scratch. Because sheets are pointers to layouts in drawings, you can import existing layouts as sheets by navigating to the drawing and selecting the appropriate layout. If you want to create a new sheet from scratch, AutoCAD automatically creates the new drawing file and layout based on the sheet creation properties associated with the sheet set. You can assign your typical drawing standards or template file as a sheet creation template, and you can specify where to store the new drawing file. You can also assign different sheet creation properties for subsets.

STEP 5. Plot using default page setups. Use the Sheet Set Manager to batch plot sheets using their respective page setup information. You can plot any combination of sheets or the entire set, and you can plot them in the background while you continue to work on your designs.

STEP 6. Publish to DWF. Regardless of the current page setup information associated with each sheet, you can publish any combination of sheets or the entire set to a DWF file. You can specify properties such as output location, password protection, and single sheet vs. multisheet DWF.

STEP 7. Create electronic transmittal or archive sets. Publishing your sheet sets to paper or to DWF files lets you share your designs with no worry that they may be modified. To share data with design partners or consultants who require access to the drawings, you can create an electronic transmittal set. Enhanced eTransmit functionality, available from the Sheet Set Manager, lets you create a ZIP file, self-extracting executable, or folder with any combination of sheets or the entire set and all of the associated drawings. Similar to eTransmit, the new Archive functionality lets you create a snapshot of your project data at key points throughout a project.

STEP 8. Plot using any page setup. When you need to plot a set of sheets, you can create a new page setup on the fly and plot any combination of sheets or the entire set using the specified page setup properties, regardless of the page setup information currently stored in each drawing layout.

STEP 9. Automate plot stamp and title block data. Use fields to create plot stamps that are flexible in appearance and location. You can add fields to existing title blocks so that changes to title block data, such as the sheet number and sheet name, automatically update.

STEP 10. Automate callout and view label data. Improve productivity and drawing accuracy by updating your existing callout and view label blocks to include fields. With field-enabled callouts and view labels, not only is the textual data updated as changes occur, hyperlinks provide easy navigation between callouts and views. You can click on a callout to open the sheet and zoom to the appropriate view.

Heidi Hewett is a technical marketing manager at Autodesk. An AutoCAD user for 17 years, she first was a lighting designer for a small electrical engineering firm.