In our journey to understanding No:1 AutoCAD Secret! – Sheet Sets we have already created our Sheet set and set a title block for it.
Now we are going to rename our drawings and renumber them using the Sheet Set Manager. This will automatically be updated in our Title Blocks!
Sheet Set Properties
In the previous post when we have created the Title Block we have also created Fields that will update our Drawing name, sheet number, job number and version. Now we will create other fields that contain information for Date, Job, Version, Plot Date, Scale, Design by, Drawn by, Checked by etc.
There are two types of data we need for those. One is generic for the whole project like Job Numer, while another type of data is different for every layout like Scale.
Sheet Set manager gives us the opportunity to do just that! When opening Field Window under SheetSet Category, we can see there are two main Name types. CurrentSheet… – data concerning only the current layout and CurrentSheetSet… – data that concerns the whole project.
To add custom properties to our Sheet Set we have to go through 3 simple steps:
- On Sheet Set Manager (we can open it with CTRL+4) right click on current SheetSet and we choose Properties
- A window will pop up, we Click on Edit Custom Properties…
- On the next Window, we Click on Add.. and we finally can Type Name and Default Value for our Custom Property.
Note: On the lower left corner we can see Owner it is very important to Choose the right one. For Example, we can choose SheetSet for our Date because it will most likely be one date for the whole project, but we have to choose Sheet for Scale because it will be different for every Layout.
Now we can Fill up all the fields. By using CurrentSheetCustom or CurrentSheetSetCustom Field names.
Note: I Like to Create separate Fields for Signed Day, Signed Month, Signed Year because that way they can be placed in the seal too.
Project arrangement
It is really useful to arrange the drawings in our project. We can be using one sheet set for different phases of the project to different specialties like architecture, grading, construction. In order to arrange the workflow, we can use new Subsets. In the example, we will create a new subset of Cover sheets and one for the actual drawings.
To do that we right click on the Sheet set Name and choose “New Subset…”
In the new window we assign a name to our new Subset for the example we will use Cover Sheets.
After creating Cover Sheets Subset, we create another one called Drawings.
Now we have to just drag and drop the drawings into their places.
Rename and Renumber
As previously said renumbering is one of the biggest advantages that sheet set manager gives us. We can not only renumber but rename our drawings at any given time. This can be done by simpy rightclicking on the specific sheet and choosing Rename & Renumber…
A new window will pop up, there we can change:
1. Number
2. Name
3. Change layout’s or drawing’s name to match the Sheet name and number. In our example we will change only layout name.
By using Next and Previous we can circle between the different sheets in our Sheet Set.
Add and Remove Layouts
The process of removing sheets from our project is pretty straight foreward. We just have to right click on a specific sheet and choose Remove Sheet
Adding Sheets is also fairy easy job. To do that we have to right click on our Project name or Subset Name if we already have one and choose Import layout as a Sheet.
A window will pop up, here we go to Browse and find the drawing we want to add. After choosing our drawing, AutoCAD will show us all the layout the selected drawings. In our example we have only one new Layout to add.
Managing project using Sheet set is really easy! Next week we will learn how to create a Library with typical details for our projects using Sheet Sets.