Project Navigator: Setting Up Sheets for a
Project
One of the more confusing aspects of the Project
Navigator structure is how to create Sheet sets for different
sizes of paper, or simply to send to different printers. It is
obviously different than for simple AutoCAD drawings, and
different from the AutoCAD Sheet Set Manager.
Conceptually, the Sheet Management is organized into a Root
Node, Sheet Subsets, and sheets
The template drawing for Sheets is defined at the root level.
The subsets define a particular layout and page setup from the
template drawing. Sheets conform to the characteristics of the
subset in which they are created.
The first step is to make sure you have a sheet template drawing
that contains all of the layouts and page setups which you are
going to require. For example, if we look at the template ABS
Sheet (Imperial) Stb.dwt, we can see that it has a layout
definition for each of the standard paper sizes. Examing the
template each of these is tied to a “.dwf”page setup. Critical
is that the page setup specifies “Layout” for “what to plot.”
Other than that, page setup is the same process you would
ordinarily go through to select particular printers, and plot
styles.
(For those of you used to the older versions of AutoCAD, note
the new way of displaying layout information, as opposed to the
older layout tabs – Autodesk is doing everything do gain back as
much drawing window as possible. The older format is still
available as well).
With your sheet template properly defined with layouts and page
setups, right-click on the root of the sheet set in the project
navigator, and select “Properties.” This will open the menu
below.
There are also two other important entries to be considered in
Project Navigator. “Page setup overrides”
allows you to specify the template containing the page
setup/layout overrides. Clicking on the value gives you the
three dots-one in each field- which you can click to get an
Explorer menu (Figure 4).
Under Sheet Creation, if you select “yes” for “Prompt for
template,” the project navigator will simply prompt you for a
template every time you create a sheet. If not, then selecting
the “Sheet creation template” will bring up the menu to select a
layout for the Sheet template – this will be the default
template and layout for the overall sheet set.
Note, however, that you can create an override to the template
of the layout specified at the root level. By selecting the
subset you wish, right-click and select “Properties.” In the
Subset Properties menu, you can specify a new template, or a
layout within the template. All sheets created in the subset
will now use that layout.
I hope this clarifies what many find a confusing issue.
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