Part 2 ->
Using the Sheet Set Manager (Part 1)
The Sheet Set Manager is a handy tool for managing groups of drawings. A Sheet
Set can be composed of any number of drawings and/or layouts, each of which equates
to a printed page in the final plan set. The Sheet Set Manager serves as an
index to the drawings in the sheet set, aiding in drawing navigation. It can
be used to open drawings in a sheet set (although this feature has some caveats
in Land Desktop 2007), as well as create new drawings in a sheet set. The
Sheet Set Manager can be used to plot any or all sheets in a sheet set with a single
command, and can send an entire sheet set to a single PDF file. A Table Of
Contents can also be automatically created from the Sheet Set Manager and added
to a page in your sheet set.
The Sheet Set Manager also maintains a variety of parameters for the sheet set,
as well as parameters for each individual sheet in the set. For example, the
Sheet Set Manager has a property for the "Project Name". Then, if
the title blocks have the correct fields set up, the "Project Name" will
automatically appear in the correct spot in every page in the sheet set. The
user only has to type the name once, in the Sheet Set Manager, and it automatically
shows up on every page.
I should note here that we currently do all work in Land Desktop 2007, so this tutorial
is geared toward the Land Desktop 2007 user. I have tried to note differences
for users of Vanilla Autocad or earlier versions of Land Desktop whenever applicable,
but you may need to adjust certain instructions in this tutorial if you use some
other version of Autocad.
The first part of this article explains how to setup Sheet Sets.
Part 2 explains how to use Sheet Sets.
Sheet Sets and Drawings
The Sheet Set is a relatively flexible tool. It can be used in a variety of
ways, but it works best with a well-defined drawing structure, containing multiple
levels of "Plot Drawings" and "Model Drawings". Most of
your linework should exist Model Space in one or more "Model Drawings".
These drawings are then XREF'd into "Plot Drawings" as needed:
In general, each Plot Drawing has only one layout tab, which equates to one plotted
page in the final plan set. Title blocks are placed in the Plot Drawing, generally
in paperspace. Model Drawings are XREF'd into modelspace, and may be XCLIP'd
as desired. Any additional objects or text may also be placed in individual
Plot Drawings, in either modelspace or paperspace. Also, all layer settings
should be configured correctly for the page. It is important to remember that
Layer States are not integrated with the Sheet Set Manager. Therefore, it
may be best to keep VISRETAIN set to 1 in your Plot Drawings, so that individual
sheets will not get their layer settings inadvertently changed by someone working
in a model drawing (one of the XREFs).
If you use the Sheet Set Manager to create new drawings, it tends to assume you
are using the structure outlined above. You do not have to do this.
You can actually place everything in one drawing, and use multiple layout tabs in
the drawing for each page. Just keep in mind is that the Sheet Set Manager
does not use Layer States, so it should be possible to plot all layout pages in
the drawing without changing Layer States.
Setting Up Sheet Sets
Sheet Sets are stored in files that end with a .DST extension. Like drawings,
Sheet Sets are created from templates. Unlike drawings, any .DST file can
be used as a Sheet Set template. There is no special "Sheet Set template"
filetype, the way there is a .DWT file for a drawing template. So really,
our "Sheet Set templates" are nothing more than blank Sheet Sets.
When we create a new Sheet Set from a template, we are basically just making an
empty copy of the Sheet Set.
We can also use any existing Sheet Set as the template for another Sheet Set.
So, if we want to create a new plan set that looks exactly like an existing plan
set, we can use the existing .DST file to create our new Sheet Set. It is
important to note that the new Sheet Set is empty - it has no Sheets in it.
The Sheet Set merely serves as a central organization and control point for a group
of related drawings (.DWG files). After we create the new Sheet Set, we can
use it to create new drawing files and add them to the Sheet Set as Sheets, or we
can add existing drawing layouts to the Sheet Set as Sheets. Drawing files
are not automatically created when we create a Sheet Set.
The templates for Sheet Sets are actually closely
linked to the templates for drawings. The location for the templates is specified
in the "Template Settings" portion of OPTIONs.
Drawing Templates
Before we create a Sheet Set template, we first create a drawing template, containing
all desired drawing settings. Then create one layout in the template for each
type of page in the sheet set. These types of sheets might include a title/index
sheet, horizontal layout and control sheets, plan and profile sheets, etc.
Alternatively, the drawing template might have only a single, generic layout, with
nothing but a title block. Or maybe it has one layout for 36x48 pages, one
for 30x42 pages, one for 24x36 pages, etc.
Once you create your layouts, place a title block in each layout. It is often
useful to create your title block as an Autocad Block with Attributes, and keep
it as a block in your layouts (do not explode the title block). In addition
to the title block, you can place any other items you wish to appear by default.
For example, you can include any general notes, north arrows and scales, viewports,
etc.
Create the Sheet Set Template
The next step is to create a Sheet Set Template. Remember, a Sheet Set Template
is nothing but an existing Sheet Set. Create the new Sheet Set by selecting
"New Sheet Set" from the "File..." menu. Or you can hit
CTRL-4 to open the Sheet Set Manager, and select "New Sheet Set" in the
Sheet Set Manager. This will start the Sheet Set creation wizard. Select
"Create a sheet set using an example sheet set", and hit "Next".
This screen should contain a list of "Sheet Set Templates". It probably
contains the default Autocad templates, unless you have deleted them or changed
the template path. You can select a sheet set from this list if you wish,
or you can browse to any other existing Sheet Set (.DST file) and use that.
If you have deleted or otherwise lost the default sheet sets created by Autodesk
and want to use one of them, a copy of them should be located in <Your
Autocad install dir>\UserDataCache\Template\SheetSets (make sure you don't overwrite
anything in this directory). Once you have selected a Sheet Set to use as
a template, hit "Next".
You should now be at a screen where you can type in a name and description for your
sheet set. This will actually be a template for new sheet sets, so choose
a name accordingly. In the field where it asks you to specify the location
of the .DST file, browse to the location for your Sheet Set templates (as specified
in the OPTIONs).
Now click on "Sheet Set Properties".
Glance through the properties. They are probably configured with some sort
of default values; you should go through them and change anything that needs to
be changed. An example is at the left. Notice the name and description
fields should contain the values you entered in the Wizard.
For now, skip over the properties in the top section, and look at the properties
in the section called "Project Control". There should be four default
properties there - "Project number", "Project name", etc.
The diagram to the left illustrates some sample values, and we'll see how they are
used in the next section. Or if you prefer, you can ignore these default properties,
and create your own custom properties. (More on custom properties in a moment.)
A bit further down is another section called "Sheet Creation". You
can ignore the "Sheet storage location" for now. Click on the entry
for "Sheet Creation template", and browse to your drawing template (your
.DWT file you created earlier). The layouts in the drawing should appear in
the list. Select the default layout that should be used by default whenever
a new sheet is created for this sheet set. This is the layout that the Sheet
Set Manager will use if you right-click on the Sheet Set name in the Sheet Set Manager,
and select "New Sheet..." The next property in the SSM is the "Prompt
for template" option. If you set this to "Yes", the user will
be given the option to select a different layout (rather than the default) when
a new sheet is created.
You can also create any additional properties you may want by clicking on the "Edit Custom Properties"
button at the bottom of the Sheet Set Properties dialog. There should be a
property for every field in your title block. There are a number of custom
properties in the sample Sheet Set Template in the diagram. Custom properties
have two different scopes: they may have a single value for the entire sheet set,
or they may have a different value for each individual sheet. This behavior
is determined by the "owner" of the custom property. When you create
a custom property, you can specify if the owner is the "Sheet Set" or
the "Sheet". For example, each page may be drawn and checked by
different people, so the "DRAWN_BY" and "CHECKED_BY" properties
are both Sheet properties. In this example, the owner of the "DATE_ISSUED"
property is the "Sheet Set", and the owner of the "DRAWN_BY"
property is the "Sheet".
Create as many custom properties as you wish, and set the default values to whatever
you wish. Then hit OK to get back to the Sheet Set Wizard, and hit "Next".
You should see a summary of the Sheet Set you just created. Make sure everything
looks OK and hit "Finish".
Adding Fields to Drawing Templates
The next step is to add Autocad Fields to the appropriate places in the drawing
templates, and link the fields to the corresponding property in the Sheet Set.
Unfortunately, this process is rather cumbersome. Hopefully it will be improved
in a future version of Autocad. In the meantime, the process isn't really
difficult, it just has a lot of steps that should be unnecessary.
In order to do create the fields we need, we have to temporarily link our Sheet
Set Template with our Drawing Template. Unfortunately, a .DWT file cannot
be added to a sheet set. To get around this problem, we'll temporarily convert
our Drawing Template into a .DWG file. Open the Drawing Template (.DWT) file
you created earlier, then select File->"Save As..." and save the template
as a .DWG file. We will perform the next series of steps in the .DWG file,
and when we are done, we'll use "Save as..." to convert it back into a
.DWT file.
Now we'll hook the Sheet Set Template to the .DWG file. The Sheet Set Template
you created in the last section should still be open in the Sheet Set Manager.
Right-click on it and select "Import layout as sheet..." Browse
to your template .DWG file (the one you just created), and select it. Make
sure all layouts are selected, and hit "Import".
Now you can start adding fields to your drawing layouts. Switch to the first
layout that has one of your title blocks in it. Assuming your title block
is an Autocad Block with Attributes, you should edit the default values of the attributes.
This is important, for a reason we'll see in a moment. There are two ways
to do this. One is to select the title block, then right-click and select
"Edit block in-place". Then double-click on each Attribute in turn,
and edit the Default value. The other way is to type BATTMAN in order to start
the Block Attribute Manager, and use it to edit
the Default values of the Attributes.
In either case, you should end up in the Attribute Editor, as seen in the diagram
on the right. Right-click inside the text box and select "Insert Field..."
This will bring up the Field dialog, as seen below on the left. In the Field
dialog, find the appropriate Field. To limit the choices to Sheet Set fields,
use the "Field category" selection box. The image on the left shows
the user selecting the "CurrentSheetSetProjectName" field, which equates
to the "Project Name" property in the Sheet Set.
Notice that the current value of the property in the Sheet Set is displayed
just to the right of the "Field category". If you want to format
the case of the text, select the desired "Format", and then hit "OK".
You have now used a Field to link the attribute in the title block to the "Project
Name" property in the Sheet Set. Whenever you change the value of the
property in the Sheet Set, the text will change in the field. Continue attaching
fields in this manner, until you have setup fields in all attributes.
In the course of doing this, you may notice one of the many issues with Sheet Sets
- if a property is left blank in the Sheet Set, it will show up as "------"
in the associated field. In order to get a field to show up as "empty"
or "blank" instead of as "-------", enter a SHIFT+SPACE character
(or hold down ALT and type 0160 on the number keypad) for the field in the Sheet
Set Manager. There is a related issue, however, that if you set a property
to SHIFT+SPACE, you may not be able to attach the field. If this happens,
go into the Sheet Set Manager and set the default value of the property to a dummy
value (the name of the property works well). Then insert the field into your
title block with your dummy value. Once you have finished setting up your
fields, go back into the Sheet Set Manager and change the default value of the property
back to SHIFT+SPACE.
At this point, you have setup the default values
for the attributes. However, in order to get the title block to work correctly
with the "New sheet..." command in the Sheet Set Manager, the current
value of the attributes must also be a field. In order to accomplish this,
delete the title block and reinsert it. As the block is inserted, the attributes
will all be set to the default value. The result should be similar to
the image to the right.
Now that you've completed the first layout tab, continue on to the rest of the layout
tabs. When you have finished setting up all the fields in all layout tabs,
remove all sheets from the Sheet Set. When we hook a Sheet Set to a drawing,
it writes information about the link into the drawing, and we don't want that information
in our template. Simply right-click on the sheets in the Sheet Set Manager
and remove them. Then using the "Save As..." command, save your
template as a Drawing Template (.DWT) file. The Sheet Set and Drawing templates
should now be ready to use.
Subsets
It is common for a set of plans to contain a number of different types of sheets.
For example, a typical plan set might start off with a Title Page, then proceed
to General Notes, then Project Control, then Horizontal Layout, then Plan and Profile
sheets, etc. Each type of sheet in the plan set may have a significantly different
layout. We would like to create a sheet set that supports all of these different
types of sheets.
There are basically two different options. However, both of them require us
to create a template Layout for each type of sheet. Typically, we would do
this by creating a number of different layouts in our Drawing Template (.DWT file),
as stated earlier in this article. There would be one layout for the Title
Page, one layout for the General Notes, one for Project Control, etc. But
then we have a choice.
Option 1: Let the User select the Layout
To prompt the user to select a layout, the "Prompt for template" option
should be set to "Yes" in the Sheet Set properties. When the user
selects "New Sheet...", the Sheet Set Manager will ask the user to browse
to the correct Drawing Template (.DWT) file, and select a layout.
Option 2: Use a Subset
For this option, create a Subset in your Sheet Set Template for each type of sheet.
When you create a new Sheet Set from a Template, all subsets in the Template are
also created in the new Sheet Set. Each Subset can be configured to load a
different Layout. To create a new Sheet (a new .DWG file) of the appropriate
type, the user would simply right-click on the desired Subset, and select "New
sheet..." This is somewhat nicer than the previous option, in that the
user doesn't have to browse for a template.
Sheets in each Subset can also be placed in subdirectories, if you wish. Right-click
on a Subset to call up its properties. Edit any of the fields to change the
behavior of the subset.
Part 2 ->