Our firm is considering launching sheet sets but we're struggling with figuring out if we should continue to use multiple layout tabs for our drawings or one layout per dwg.
We are a landscape architecture firm and our typical set might only have about 5 sheets and a really big set might only have 10-20 sheets.
We currently xref in a civil drawing as an underlay and then setup multiple layout tabs for each sheet in our sets (planting, grading, layout, lighting, etc.). We lock our viewports and generally work only in the layout tab and not in model space. In 2008 we can now control lineweight and color within the viewports so it makes our current method even more attractive.
It seems like we can continue to do this, right? And then import all of the layout tabs into the SSM. If we go this way should we include the titleblock in the layout tab or does SSM add it for you when you import the layout tabs?
I know the preferred method is to use one layout tab and have a separate DWG for each sheet. The downside is that it's different from what people are used to doing and it creates many more files than you might expect for even the smallest project. You would have a base.dwg, layout.dwg, grading.dwg, planting.dwg as well as a corresponding numbered sheet L100.dwg, L101.dwg, L102.dwg, etc. For someone working on these drawings they might get confused as to which one to open. And if you open a drawing sheet from the SSM you can't actually edit the information because it is an xref - so you might as well be working in the actual file and not the numbered sheet drawing.
Seems like SSM manager is great if you are managing multiple disciplines or really large sets but for small projects using just one dwg with multiple layout tabs and an xref'd attribute title block works just fine.
Am I missing something? We are seriously leaning towards not using SSM at all so if someone thinks this is a major mistake please let me know.
Thanks!