Topic: Sheet Set Manager - Best Practice -- Seeking advice and knowledge

[T-Square]

Hello All,

I am looking for a "Best Practices" when it comes to the Sheet Set Manager(SSM).

I work for an engineering company in which we use clients title blocks. We are not allowed to change their blocks or deviate from their standards. We have to supply a drawing index and drawings are uploaded at various stages to our clients upload site. I have mentioned to the powers that be that it "might" be in our best interest to use the SSM for our projects. We have hundreds of drawings in our packages. I see a lot of room for automation of certain functions that will save us all a LOT of time and reduce errors. We can print/publish and ETransmit which are both proven time killers. Usually the end of a project or submittal is crunch time and when a lot of time is spent fixing what should have been fixed long before we even start modifying/creating drawings.

So, with that background said....

Drawings come as:

AutoCAD files only
AutoCAD/Raster files
Raster files only

In files that have only a raster image...no AutoCAD title block, I have placed a block with attributes that match the "Tag" name of the attributes for the title block used in pure AutoCAD files. I.E.,

TITLE1
TITLE2
TITLE3
DWGNO
SHEET
REV

I did this so that I can use "data extraction" to an excel file, then I use the "concantenate" function in Excel to combine "TITLE1" + "TITLE2" + "TITLE3" into one line on another layout tab. Then I link to the tab that I created with the extracted info and then I create a table from that Excel file. This method works fine for the initial creation of the drawing index, but is not worth the process to get to the table creation. Consequently the tables are exploded so that the information can be changed.

What I am looking to do is be able update the index automatically using the SSM. The other HUGE advantage is being able to plot/publish from the SSM, the Etransmit function and drawing control using the SSM instead of the "hunt for a drawing" method. SSM will allow users to open the SSM for their project and all "Valid" drawings be found and opened from the SSM.

I have tried using fields, but have not had much luck in getting it to work.

Field
Objects
Object(pick "TITLE1" attribute of the title block)
Value
Uppercase

I have also seen the "Custom properties" that can be added to each sheet in the SSM. Using this method is like re-typing the title block information again, which is not what I would like to do.

Ultimately... Anyone have info on a "Best Practices" approach to the above?

As always...any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Tim

[mjfarrell]

Was this a 'bump"


I think if you use the Custom Properties and fields correctly you wont be typing the title block information twice.
Merely allowing the sheet set to fill in the title block information....

Perhaps suggest that you will provide a working sheet set template and title block to those folks NOT using it
so that you can....

And or use fields and object function to extract information from their dumb drawings and place it in invisble
attribute fields for your use.....

[Rob...]

There have been some recent discussions about SSM over at cadtutor, http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/forum.php.

[mjfarrell]

before I open your file....


note you may need to join columns in the table to get all the fields that represent your drawing titles on on line....and suppress borders between those table cells....

more in a few minutes

[mjfarrell]

so, in your sheet set you define

custom Properties owned by the SHEET


Then in the table you use those sheet properties to populate the table....


then you will need to play around with how you format that table a bit....but I think it will yield your desired result

[Jeff_M]

Tim, change the custom sheet properties to the "Values" you need.

[mjfarrell]

Jeff,

I am not sure I understand what you are saying. Only thing I see you can do to the "Custom Properties" is to "manually" type in the property. I don't want to manually type in the information in the drawing index.

Seriously frustrated. I am trying to alleviate the stress folks...and me...go through when it's crunch time and this is one HUGE area that is ALWAYS an issue at the end of our projects.

At some point you must create the custom properties for the sheets....

I think the challenge for you is that this information is already in the sheets as DUMB text, not as fields.
As such you would need a way to copy and paste the contents of the dumb text into the 'VALUE' portion of the sheet's properties to utilize fields and SSM.


Unless and or until those producing those sheets insert fields in their titleblocks this is what they have reduced you to using as well...dumb text and manual methods.

[mjfarrell]

Jeff,

You are correct. Thus the reason I created a separate block with ONLY fields in it that use the "object/attribute/value/uppercase" as the field for each of the 6 attributes I need the values of. The block has the "default" value as a "multiline field" that reads the "object...block(TBINFO-TEST) and then "should" put those attribute values into another block "TBINFO-FIELDS" which should then be available to the "Insert Shee List Table" right click from the SSM. When I created the SSM, before selecting any layouts(dwg's), I added the 6 "Sheet Custom Properties" for each of the needed attributes.

Tried to attach an image, but par for the course not much works for me. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

No, pretty sure that isn't going to do what you need or want it to.
You are going to need Sheet set custom properties and they need to be owned by the sheet.
And Sheet set is not going to allow you to pluck them from block attribute values for this task. (at least not as I understand your data, and not automatically(without some code))