<- Part 1
Using the Sheet Set Manager (Part 2)
The first part of this article
explains how to setup Sheet Sets. This part explains how to use Sheet Sets.
Using Sheet Sets
Once you have created a Sheet Set, it becomes the central management point for a
whole collection of drawings in your project. In future versions of AutoCAD,
the Sheet Set Manager may largely replace the Open and New dialog boxes, and become
a sort of "Drawing Explorer" tool. It hasn't reached that point
yet, but even with it's current limited capabilities, the Sheet Set Manager can
be rather useful.
Creating New Sheets
To create a new drawing and add it as a sheet in the sheet set, simply right-click
on the Sheet Set (or Subset). The new sheet will be created in the location
specified in the Sheet Set. The "New Sheet" dialog will pop open,
asking you to specify the Sheet Number and Sheet Title. Unfortunately, the
Sheet Set Manager does not have any automatic support for sheet set numbering.
(Maybe this feature will be added in a future version.) The "New Sheet"
dialog will also come up with a default file name, by combining the sheet number
and sheet name. Unfortunately, there is not yet any way to customize this
process, so that the filenames fit your company's standard naming conventions, but
you can just type a filename on the next line. This creates a .DWG file containing
the layout specified in the template (or the layout selected by the user, if that
option was enabled).
You can also add a layout from an existing drawing to a sheet set. Right-click
on the sheet set and select "Import layout as sheet...", then browse to
the drawing and select the layout(s) to import.
After you have created your new sheet, right-click on the drawing and select "Properties...".
Change any properties that may need changing.
You can now double-click on the sheet in the Sheet Set Manager to open the drawing
(although there's a special caveat for Land Desktop 2007 users that we'll get to
in a moment.) Assuming you have setup the title block in the layout as described
earlier, the title block in the new drawing will be automatically linked to your
sheet set, and all values should appear with the correct text as soon as you open
the drawing.
If you used an existing drawing that doesn't have a title block in it, use Design
Center to browse to your Drawing Template. Find the desired title block, right-click
on it, and insert it from the Template into the current drawing.
When you change a value in the sheet set, you should see it update in the drawing
as soon as the fields are updated. By default, fields are updated when you
REGEN (RE) or REGENALL (REA). They are also updated when you open, save, plot,
or eTransmit your drawing. You can disable any of these on the User Preferences
tab of OPTIONS, but it is strongly recommended that you leave all of them enabled.
Sheet List Tables
The Sheet Set Manager has limited capabilities for inserting tables of contents,
called Sheet List Tables, in your drawing. In order to insert a Sheet List
Table, you must have AutoCAD open to a paperspace layout, and the layout must be
a Sheet in the Sheet Set. It doesn't have to be the first Sheet in the Sheet
Set, but it must be one of the Sheets in the Sheet Set. Before you insert
a Sheet List Table, make sure you have created a good Table Style, one designed
to be used in paperspace.
To insert the Sheet List Table, right-click on the Sheet List and select "Insert
Sheet List Table". You should see the dialog box shown on the right.
Notice that you have freedom to configure all of the columns however you wish.
You can even add your Custom Sheet Properties to the table, if you wish. This
gives you the ability to put a wide variety of information into a Sheet List Table.
Once you have inserted a Sheet List Table, you can right-click on the table and
call up its properties. You can configure this table however you wish.
You can even insert multiple Sheet List Tables, and configure each of them in a
different way. If you make changes to your sheets, simply right-click on the
Sheet List Table and select "Update Sheet List Table".
The "Insert Sheet List Table" command is somewhat limited. Every
time you use it, it will start up with the same options as the last table you inserted.
There does not seem to be any way to create a Sheet List Template.
However, you can work around this limitation. Once you insert a Sheet List
Table into a drawing, it behaves much like a Dynamic Block. You can WBLOCK
this Table out of one drawing and into another drawing, even if the drawing is in
a different Sheet Set. After you insert the table into the new drawing, simply
"Update" it. It should automatically change to reflect the new Sheet
Set. You can also place Sheet Set Tables in your Drawing Template file, so
that new Sheets already have the Sheet Set Table in them.
Special Note for Land Desktop 2007 Users
In Vanilla Autocad and in Land Desktop versions prior to 2007, you can double-click
on a sheet in the Sheet Set Manger to open the drawing. With Land Desktop
2007 configured to default behavior, double-clicking on the drawing in the Sheet
Set Manager will still open the drawing, but the currently-open drawing will also
be left open. The user now has two drawings open, but the new drawing is opened
in something called "Land Disabled mode", where all Land Desktop
commands fail to work. This is particularly useless, and even dangerous.
By closing other drawings, you can get Land Desktop commands to start working again.
Unfortunately, you can also end up working in a drawing from one project while accessing
the project data (points, alignments, etc.) from another project. So getting
Land Desktop into "Land Disabled" mode should be avoided at all costs.
If you accidentally get multiple drawings open simultaneously in Land Desktop 2007,
immediately shut down Land Desktop and restart it.
The main reason for this change in Land Desktop behavior appears to be that it allows
certain commands to work inside of Land Desktop. For example, it is now possible
to create Map Annotations in Land Desktop. So now you can create a Map topology
and database links, and use them to insert Map Annotations into your drawing, all
without exiting from Land Desktop. You can also run the PUBLISH command from
Land Desktop, instead of being forced to switch to Map to PUBLISH (more about PUBLISH
later).
Unfortunately, because of the poor way that Autodesk implemented the change, it
also means that you cannot use the Sheet Set Manager to move between drawings.
You also cannot use the drawings in the "Most Recent Drawings" list in
the "File" menu.
You can partially workaround this issue by setting the SDI system variable to 1
when working in Land Desktop. Simply type SDI at the command prompt, and set
it to 1. (You can also type OPTIONS, and check the box next to "Single-drawing
compatibility mode" on the System tab.) This causes Land Desktop to behave
(almost) as in previous versions of Land Desktop, restricting the user to one drawing
at a time. You can now use the Sheet Set Manager and the "Recent Drawings..."
list to move between drawings. If you need to PUBLISH or use any of the other
commands that only work in MDI mode, simply type SDI and set it back to 0.
When you finish the task, set SDI back to 1.
Unfortunately, the OPEN command in Land Desktop only works when SDI is set to 0.
This means that if you set SDI mode to 1 while you work, you can ONLY use the Sheet
Set Manager or the Recent Files... list to navigate between drawings. If you
ever need to actually browse to a drawing and OPEN it, then you have to set SDI
back to 0. However, this can rapidly get so confusing that you may wish to
just leave SDI at 0 and learn to live with it. This is a terrible mess that
hopefully Autodesk will fix with a service patch. Until then, Land Desktop
users must suffer a bit. This problem is extremely annoying, but it can be
managed with patience.
Publishing (Plotting) Sheet Sets
All pages in a sheet set can be plotted at once with the PUBLISH command.
Or you can PUBLISH just a subset of the pages. You can also modify the Page
Setup of all pages in a sheet set as you publish it. There are a variety of
options.
Publishing from the Sheet Set Manager
The simplest way to publish a sheet set is to right-click on the sheet set in the
Sheet Set Manager and select "Publish to plotter". This will send
each page to the Page Setup stored with the layout. Similarly, you can select
"Publish to DWF" to send the Sheet Set to DWF format. Note that
you can initiate this plot action from the Sheet Set Manager even if you do not
have any of the drawings open.
If you want a standard Autocad plot stamp to appear on your drawing, right-click
on the Sheet Set and select "Include Plot Stamp". You can also select
"Plot Stamp Settings..." to configure the settings.
You can also right-click on the Sheet Set and select "Publish dialog box..."
to customize your options even further. This is almost the same thing as typing
PUBLISH at the command line (or selecting "Publish..." from the "File"
menu). The difference is that selecting the "Publish dialog box"
from the Sheet Set Manager will call up a dialog box populated with all the sheets
in the sheet set. The PUBLISH command will call up the same dialog box, populated
with all layout tabs in the currently-open drawing. In the Publish Dialog
Box, you can change the number of copies, or change the order that the pages print
in (first to last or last to first), or change the layout used for each page.
Page Setup Overrides
Page Setup Overrides can be used to send an entire sheet set to a different plotter
than the one specified in the page layouts. For example, you can have the
Page Setup in the Layout plot to your main, full-size plotter. By default,
when you open the drawing and hit "Plot...", this is the plotter that
the drawing will plot on.
You can also specify a different Page Setup to use to plot. The caveat is
that the Page Setup must plot either by "Layout" or by "Extents",
and not by "Window". Any Page Setup that specifies a Windows cannot
be used as a Page Setup Override.
The easiest way to setup your Page Setups is to place all of them into your main
Drawing Template (.DWT file). This will make sure that all Page Setups are
in every drawing you create. But you can also specify this same .DWT file
as the location of the Page Setup Overrides. Right-click on your Sheet Set
and select "Properties", then select "Page setup overrides file"
and browse to your Drawing Template. If you set this in your Sheet Set Template,
then all sheet sets will have the Page Setup Overrides already configured when you
create them.
Once you specify a source for the Page Setup Overrides, you can select them in the
Sheet Set Manager.
Creating PDF's
The easiest way to send an entire sheet set to PDF is to create a Sheet Set Override
that creates PDFs. Then Publish your sheet set using the Page Setup Override.
Your entire sheet set should be published to a single PDF file.
If you use the DWG to PDF.PC3 converter that comes with Autocad 2007, your PDF file
will be in the parent directory of the file that contains your Page Setup Overrides.
So, if you are using your Drawing Template as your Page Setup Override file, your
PDF's will be created in the parent directory of your Drawing Templates. As
far as I know, there is no way to change this behavior. If you use another
PDF creator, you may be able to specify a default location for storing PDF files.
eTransmit and Archive
You can also eTransmit an entire sheet set. In the Sheet Set Manager, right-click
on the sheet set and select "eTransmit...". Select or create an
eTransmittal Setup, and create the eTransmit archive. Your entire sheet set
is now ready to be shipped off or archived.
There is also an "Archive..." option. As near as I can tell, this
is identical to eTransmit, except that it uses a "preset Transmittal Setup".
It's therefore a "quick" version of eTransmit that doesn't require the
user to select the eTransmittal Setup.
Other Features
This document gives a basic rundown on how to use most of the features of Sheet
Sets. There is nothing here about how to use Sheet Sets to manage Views.
I may add that at a future date. In the meantime, this should be enough to
get you started using Sheet Sets, which should greatly simplify your document management
and plotting tasks.
<- Part 1