Thursday, June 11, 2009

Sheet Set Manager productivity tips on sheet indexing

A common question is how to show something like SHEET 6 OF 54 in the title block on a sheet drawing when using Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD or Project Navigator in AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD MEP. There is no out-of-the-box functionality for this in SSM. First you need somewhere to save the total number of sheets. Then you need somewhere to save the index for the sheet.

One way is to add a Sheet Set Custom Property that holds the total number of sheet and a Sheet Custom Property that holds the sheet index. The Sheet Number property can of course be used for the sheet index.

Whenever you add a sheet or want the total sheets to be correct you need to manually update it. The same thing with the sheet index property on each sheet.

To have this show up on your sheet you can add the two fields using standard methods like adding TEXT or MTEXT or using a block with an attribute. Then add the fields.

Use the Field category SheetSet and use CurrentSheetCustom and CurrentSheetSetCustom field names and select the custom property name you have.

To further enhance this you can use SSMPropEditor. Among other functionalities it has you can with the click of a button update your total sheets count with the Paste Sheet count button. Just select the property you want to update and click on the button.

If enough users are interested I also could add support for automatically numbering or renumber sheet sets or sheet index values. If you’re interested in this please send me an email and let me know as well as how you create yours. Is it plain numbers like 1,2,3 or is is more complex system? Would you like to index all sheets or just some? Would you like to set a start value for the indexing?

Now you know how to solve the problem with Sheet X of Y or Page X of Y showing up on the title block.

SSMPropEditor runs outside of AutoCAD but if you want something like sheet indexing update within AutoCAD let me know as this is also possible to automate.

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