Sheetsets - huh!

I spent last week writing a new chapter on sheetsets for my book Using AutoCAD 2005: Advanced (Autodesk Press). When Autodesk allowed us journalists to write about the new AutoCAD release, I declared sheetsets to be the paperspace of AutoCAD 2005. My experience of last week proves the postulate true.

You don't just apply the SheetSet command to your drawings; you need to spend time -- hours or maybe even days -- preparing all your firm's computers before you enter the NewSheetSet command for the first time. Here are some things I learned the hard way:

* The sheet must be in layout tab before views can be placed from the Sheet Set Manager (SSM).

* But here's the screwy part: named views have to be created in model space of the resource drawing. Views created in layouts don't show up in the Resource Drawing tab (but they do in the Views tab).

* And more screwy stuff: those named views created in layouts that show up in the SSM's Views tab -- you can't do anything with them! You can only work with the views listed in the SSM's Resource Drawing tab, created in model space.

* Right-click the view name in the SSM's Resource Drawing tab, and select Place on Sheet. Notice that AutoCAD prompts:
Specify insertion point:
Instead of left-clicking (to specify the insertion point), click the right mouse button. AutoCAD displays a shortcut menu listing scale factors.

* Don't place views from Oil Module.dwg; they take forever to be inserted!

* There is an undocumented system variable called DefaultViewCatalog. It provides the default text for the Category droplist in the New View dialog box of the View command.

* If the Sheet Set Manager seems to be listing the wrong info, save any open drawings. There is a Refresh button (F5) but it never did anything for me.

Comments

[Shaan Hurley]

Ralph,

Perhaps just some best practices on Sheet Sets might assist you. Granted they take a little consideration before use, but once implemented our users swear by them. You also have the author perspective rather than the user. During the complete design and development of this feature, customer feedback and validation was critical.

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2004/05/autocad_sheet_s.html

Cheers,
-Shaan

[Max Fugier]

Ralph,
You are concentrating on using the sheet set manager's resource option to "build" the layout space. Instead, just create the layout like you always have done in any AutoCAD 2000x release.

The simpler and possibly most useful application of sheet sets is to use them as an index of drawings. The "sheet set" keeps the names of the drawing, their locations, and layout "masked" under a more logical name like "A1 Site Plan and Vicinity Map".

This makes it much easier to direct the designer to open the Sheet Set and not navigate to a deeply buried subfolder location and to a cryptic file name. The chance of opening the wrong file or the wrong version of the file decreases dramatically.

More over, you can plot the entire collection of sheets from the sheet set manager (batch plot) and archive the entire job from the sheet set manager (eTransmit for multiple sheets.) This is a very productive addition to AutoCAD.
--
Max Fugier
Robert McNeel and Associates
Technical Support

[Kirk Crawford]

The first two paragraphs read so clear to me. Plan, plan, and plan some more. Consider all the possibilities.
But another consideration, how does SheetSets fit into a companies PDMs?
That is what I have to deal with.
Please note; my group can hardly deal with Xref, let alone Layouts.