The remaining AutoCAD Fields that need to be defined are “Scale”, “Drawn By”, “Designed By”, and “Check By”. Now, these attributes don’t necessarily need to be defined within the sheet-level information on projects where the scale, drafter, designer, and checker remain constant throughout the set. However, you may need to have sheet-level information such as a work order # that is different at points in the set or maybe there is a different drafter or designer, too. When this is the case, it is necessary to create Fields under the “CurrentSheetCustom”.
In all situations where the “CurrentSheetCustom” type is used, they operate the same. You must define a custom name and format specific to the item you are creating a Field for. Aside from that, the process of defining a Field within an attribute remains the same. When you create your custom property name, however, pay very close attention to the exact way you define it. As we continue, there becomes a big difference between “Designedby” and “Designed By” and “designed by”, where the specific way you create the custom property will need to be duplicated when creating the sheet set template down the line.
Once you have finished defining you “CurrentSheetCustom” Fields, you should end up with something that looks similar to the image below.
You should now have all of the sheet-level information defined with Fields inside of attributes. Pat yourself on the back, because that is a pretty big task. Aside from simply defining the attributes and selecting the correct Fields, you have to keep track of your custom properties, set all of your text styles and layers correctly, and make sure everything lines up properly within the title block. Simply WBLOCK these attributes out and you have created your text block to fill you sheet information in. To rehash why the attributes need to be in a block, is because attributes-and therefore the Fields within them-cannot be edited through an external reference. Placing them within a block is a great way of keeping everything organized and easy to insert, though.
My suggestion regarding a detail of this process, though, is to make sure that your title block file starts at the coordinates 0,0 and that your point of insertion for the block you create is also at 0,0 and that you use the same UNITS as you use in your project sheets. This will make your life much easier when you reference them into your drawing in the future. Before you ever insert the text block with your Fields, you want to first place your drawing sheets into a sheet set you have already customized to your needs. You sheets must first be a part of the sheet set, or your Fields will not populate in the way they should.
Let’s go through the process of creating and customizing a Sheet Set Template that will allow you to utilize the Fields you just created. The first major question that arises in this situation is, “Do you currently use the Sheet Set Manager or have any previously create sheet set files?” If you do, you can make a copy of it and remove all the sheets contained within it and you have a ready-made sheet set template. If you don’t, either open up the Sheet Set Manager by typing SHEETSET at the command line or entering Ctrl+4 and selecting “New Sheet Set…” from the drop down menu as shown below.
From here you select “Existing drawings” (If you are setting up this template without a project created or sheets to populate within it, you can choose to omit adding sheets when finished). Also, once you have your template created and are creating a new sheet set for future projects, you can select “An example sheet set” in order to bypass about two thirds of the steps that are to come.
Select “Next >” in order to progress to the “Sheet Set Details” page. Define the name of the new sheet set, give a description if needed, choose a location for the .dst file to be stored, and then select “Sheet Set Properties”. Note that once you have your template set up, you will no longer need to set up sheet set properties in this wizard.
Below you will see the Sheet Set Properties dialog box. You will now need to select the “Edit Custom Properties” button.
Pick the “Add…” button to define the custom properties that you set up with Fields within the attributes before.
Be sure when you are defining the “Name:” of the custom property, it matches exactly with its corresponding value that you gave it within the Field dialog box. If you don’t do this, the Fields will not populate correctly. Also note that the “Default value:” that you give the custom property will be what is displayed in your title block if you haven’t defined the custom property within that specific sheet. One last task within this dialog is to choose the “Sheet” radio button within the “Owner” area and select “OK”.
As you define all of your Custom Properties, you will see the dialog box track your progress and the details. Select “OK” when you are finished.
After selecting “OK”, you will see a new area within the Sheet Set Properties dialog box containing your Sheet Custom Properties. As shown in the image below. Pick “OK” to continue creating your sheet set.
At this point, you can add existing sheets to the set by “Browse…” or just “Next >” to continue without adding.
AutoCAD now gives you the opportunity to review and confirm you work before picking “Finish”.
If you didn’t add sheets in the wizard, you can at any time by right-clicking on the project name add selecting “Import layout as sheet…” and then following the prompts.
Whether you have sheets brought into your set or not, you can begin defining the both the regular and custom sheet set properties for the title block Fields by right-clicking on the project name and selecting “Properties…” from the short cut menu.
Now populate the information to your needs and select “OK”.
You can insert the block containing your Field populated attributes any time after the drawing you are working on has been added to the sheet set. When you do, you will see a dialog box similar to the one below.
In this dialog box, you can override all of the Fields that you specified in the attributes. You really, really don’t want to do this because it negates all the effort you put into it. However, the ability to do this is nice if you are working with another office, a subcontractor for design work, or if someone doesn’t know what a Field is because the attributes in the block still function as attributes and the people that aren’t familiar with Fields can still operate within their normal environment if needed. Also, if you added the block before associating the sheet with a set, delete the block, purge your drawing of said block, and reinsert it after the sheet is associated.
In the image below, you can see an example of the fruits of your labor.
To some, this may seem like an unnecessary and tedious process to do something that simple blocks and attributes can do. You may be right, especially if you aren’t using or don’t plan to use the Sheet Set Manager. However, the unique feature that using Fields in your title block gives you, is that you can edit every one of these items without ever getting into the drawing. Now imagine how many times you’ve had to open and close all of your drawings in order to change the sheet number or description and how time consuming that was. That in and of itself makes using Fields in the title block beneficial enough for me.
Stay tuned next week to discover uses of AutoCAD Fields with objects and block in your drawings.
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JC on 10.29.2009
Is there a way to add an engineer’s stamp using the Sheet Set Manager? In our office we have different layers to tell what state the plans are at like 50%, 80%, 95%, and on the final set the stamp goes on and the 50% goes where the engineer’s stamp would normally go. What i would like to be able to do is to go into the Sheet Set Manager and change whether or not the plans are at 50% or 100% without going into the drawing. Is this possible to do?
Admin on 10.30.2009
Currently, there isn’t an ability to do this within the sheet set manager – at least to my knowledge. I’ve delved pretty deep in this feature for AutoCAD, so I’m confident in my answer, but there is still room for error on my part. I’d like to offer the only solution I can give you: insert these blocks into the title block x-ref as you need them (if you use a VISRETAIN system variable value of 0) or on different layers to be interchanged as needed (if you use a VISRETAIN system variable value of 1). This is the only decent way of handling this within all of the sheets, because you only have to open and edit one drawing to affect and update the rest. Hope this helps.
Bryan