Sheet Set Manager and Prototype Drawings

[mboyer]

Hello all!! We are upgrading to 2007 from 2004 in a couple of months. I currently have a seat of 2007 installed and I'm in the process of setting up sheet sets for the teams to use once ew do upgrade. Our projects typically are large rollouts that usually have a prototype set to start from.

Here are some of the issues I've run into while setting these up. I'm hoping that some of you have come across these same issues and have found ways to work around them.

Issue #1: The sheet list function I have found to be limiting. Our sheet indexes typically follow a company wide format that differs from the table that is inserted using the sheet list function. I modified the table brought in only to have it lose it's formatting when updated. What I did to eliminate this problem was to just create my own table and link fields to the sheet set. Fields are updated automatically, but I'm not sure yet if these links will need to be re-established, once I start a new job, to the new sheet set.

Issue #2: Sheet Names. Originally, I set up fields within the titleblock for sheet name, number, etc. Problem I ran into was that the longer sheet names would not wrap to fit within the allocated space without creating an Mtext field. I did not want to have all these indiviual entities in my titleblock. (we currently have a block we insert for this and I discovered early on that blocks w/ fields did not get great results) Therefore, i created a table which included all my fields so that I could have 1 entity for all fields and have the wrapping function for the longer sheet names. Anyone got any other ideas for this? Would really prefer a block w/ the fields, but can't quite figure that out.

Issue #3: Linking objects from other drawings to fields. I imagine this will be some sort of VBA or lisp function. (I have classes scheduled at AU for this) If there's a non-programming way to do this, that would be GGRRREEEAATTT!!!!

Issue #4: Once the sheet set is created for a prototype, how do you create a new sheet set using the exact layout of all sheets (they are all different)? I tried from existing sheet set, got just the setup and no drawings. Tried from existing drawings and I could not select the drawings that were included in the prototype sheet set. ?????

[Opie]

#1 - Are you adjusting the Table style? or are you adding additional columns to match your company standards?

#2 - Until Multi-line Attributes are added to AutoCAD, multiple lines will need to be done through MTEXT that cannot be included in a block.

#3 - What type of linking are you referring to? Are you wanting to link object A in drawing A to object B in drawing B? Or are you trying to link Object A in drawing A to the Sheet Number in Drawing B? You might also look into Views in your Sheet Set Manager. This may provide the link you are looking for.

#4 - See your other thread.

[mboyer]

#1: I am adjusting the table style. I tried creating a table style specific to the index, but I ended up still having to modify it.

#3: Specifically one of the things I thought would be neat to do. In the baseplan, say you have a polyline that designates the Lease Line of a tenant space. In a seperate drawing, it would be cool to create a table complete w/ fields and formulas to grab that square footage and run a calculation to determine the occupant load. The load total would change if the polyline were to change. This is just one example.

[Opie]

I don't think fields can be linked across drawings. I have not tried it.

[sinc]

Here are some of the issues I've run into while setting these up. I'm hoping that some of you have come across these same issues and have found ways to work around them.

See if this helps any.

[mboyer]

That is a great article.

Thanks!!