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