Under-utilized AutoCAD tools: Sheetset manager and annotation scaling features

I frequently come across this scenario: An organization has many seats of AutoCAD and uses a manual process to re-number tags, or to create and update sheet lists. Or, a designer needs to change the scale of a view and manually rescales all model space tags, text objects, leaders and dimensions. Now, if you do the math, it can take hours of labor to keep all of this manually coordinated in a drawing set. If the project is large enough, it can even take a day.

We all know that in the United States, labor is among the most expensive costs for most AEC firms. Reducing labor hours means saving money and having more time to do more projects. There are two features in AutoCAD that I will talk about that will save you labor in the long run: The Sheetset Manager and the Annotative scaling features.

The Sheetset Manager solves a couple of time-consuming tasks. First, it keeps all view tags with the correct view number and sheet numbers. In other words, when I place a callout on a floor plan that references a detail, the callout will automatically be labeled with the correct view number and sheet number. If the view number or sheet number were to change, the tag would reflect those changes. It keeps your sheet list up to date automatically. In addition, it also makes plotting a drawing set a heck of a lot faster. You have probably used the publish features in AutoCAD, so you understand how this speeds up plotting of large sets of drawings. The Sheetset manager has this as a built-in feature. The thing is that many people don’t want to take the time to learn how to use it; people are used to doing things a certain way for so long they do not see the benefit of using such a feature.

It’s easy to get started: The Help file is your friend. To activate the Sheetset Manager, type “ssm” at the command prompt. The intent of this article is not really to explain how to us the feature but to understand its overall behavior. If you would like your company to become more efficient and more productive with its time, Hagerman and Company has the knowledge and can assist you with this.



When you open the ssm, you have to open your .dst file, which contains the locations of all your project drawing files. Once you do this, you will see all the sheets listed that belong to your project. In the Model Views tab, you will also see all of the “base” drawings of the project. What I mean by “base” drawings are the actual files containing the drawing data such as floor plans etc.

Once you have your project set up here, all of your floor plan views, sheets, details and other pertinent information will show up in the Sheetset manager. This allows you to switch between drawings without having to go “dig up” the locations of files through Windows Explorer.

If you are not using the Sheetset manager, you are probably manually x-referencing all of your drawings onto sheets. The Sheetset manager will automatically do this for you just by dragging and dropping. You simply drag one of those views in the model views and AutoCAD will x-reference the drawing into your view. It will also make sure your layers are set just like the original view. Once you place one of those views into the sheet, it will place the view label with the scale as well. It will also automatically update the view name and scale if those change.


 

This tool has been around for a while now. So, even if you have the 2009 version, you can take advantage of it.

The other under-utilized feature is the annotation scaling. It has been perfected in 2009 and 2010 versions of AutoCAD. It works great. So, why aren’t more people using it? I think that the main hurdle is training. Most people have to learn how the tool works to use it and don’t have the patience to do so. The time it takes to learn how to use this feature will be minute compared to the labor savings that come with the tool. The premise of this tool is that there are a lot of companies out there that have to change a drawing scale and have to manually resize all of the text, dimensions, tags and callouts to accommodate for the change in the scale of the view. The annotation in this picture can also be set so it only appears at certain scales. This is useful because there is annotation that you want to show in detail that you would otherwise not show in a plan view.

Neither of the two features I have talked about are going to work for every firm. The main reason is because of resistance from learning and implementing the changes onto traditional CAD standards. People are so used to using CAD “the traditional way” that they may be resistant to change. Another reason might be that the projects are small enough (1 or 2 sheets) that this is not going to benefit them as much. In any case, both of these tools can greatly reduce repetitive tasks, and have been around for quite a while, but not many companies are making use of them. My suggestion is to at least visit the Help file and try to utilize these features, because they will go a long way.