Keynotes in Civil 3D: How to Hack Sheet Set Manager Like a Pro

JUSTIN EHART: Hi this is Keynotes in Civil 3D: How to Hack Sheet Set Manager Like a Pro. Thanks for joining me. I'm Justin Earhart with Ware Malcolm. A little bit about me-- I'm the studio manager of our digital transformation team. I've spent 29 years working in architecture, civil engineering, and land surveying. And now, I've been transitioning more towards data science and software development.

Previously, I've spoke at Autodesk University in 2022. That one was using Entwine LiDAR Datasets Within Civil 3D and ReCap Pro, and then in 2019, Drone 2 Design. My focus has been shifting towards open source software for geospatial and data science applications and doing a lot of automating within Revit and Civil 3D.

I'm a Codiphile. It's not really a real word. But I work in many different programming languages. I'm an avid comic book collector and a sneakerhead. A little bit about Ware Malcolm, where I'm currently employed. We provide professional architecture, planning, interior design, civil engineering, branding, and building measurement services to corporate, commercial, residential developer, and public institution clients throughout the world.

We have 28 offices in North and South America. We take pride in the fact that we're not like other AEC firms. But the whole reason we're here today is to talk about Sheet Set Manager and how we can hack it inside of Civil 3D. But first, let's go over our agenda for the day. What are we going to cover? We're going to talk about the role of keynnotes in Civil 3D projects. We're going to see how we can use Sheet Set Manager for those keynnotes.

We're going to automate repetitive tasks using Dynamo. We're going to create a custom keynnote legend. And finally, we're going to talk about customizing multi-leaders for keynnotes. And just to give you a little sampler of what we're going to be covering today, let's take a quick look at this video. Over here on the left-hand side of the screen, you can see Sheet Set Manager. And I have just some subsets in there.

In the background, I'm running Dynamo. And it's connecting to an Excel spreadsheet. And what it's going to do is populate a list that we can then leverage on our sheets. So we'll give this a quick second here. And what does pop up are paving construction notes. And we see that we've got 23 of them here. We're going to get into a little bit more depth here in just a moment.

What will we not cover today? Well, some of the general how-to relating to Dynamo, Dynamo Player, the nodes, hierarchy, how to connect them with wires, the different libraries, lacing, except for in one example, and dictionaries. And actually, we do kind of touch on this. The reason why I don't dive into those items are there are so many resources online for you to make sure that you're successful. We can't cover it in this session today.

There's the DynamoDB for Civil 3D Primer, which was released this year in 2023. The PDF that you'll get that's in the attachments, you'll be able to click that and go directly to it. Not only that, the Autodesk YouTube community, they have a channel dedicated to Dynamo Office Hours. Again, the link is here, then in the official Dynamo Forum.

So let's talk about the role of keynnotes in our Civil 3D projects. keynnotes are critical for organization of those civil projects. They link design elements across drawings and multiple disciplines. They provide consistent references for communication. And they also streamline our workflow between design, detailing, and ultimately, construction.

They easily connect civil engineering to cost estimating and even constructability. They integrate processes from design to the handover process. keynnotes also reduce errors and omissions in drawings. They ensure constructibility with coordinated documents. They improve quality control across your deliverables.

Dynamo optimizes keynnote workflows. It automates repetitive tasks. It creates custom tools for tracking. And it saves time and improves accuracy. So ultimately, we want to use Sheet Set Manager for those keynnotes. Why? Well, Sheet Set Manager tracks the changes across all of the sheets. And keynnotes can be used in the same manner.

We can organize all of our keynnotes into custom subsets or multiple subsets. In the image, we see the paving construction notes. But we can have some for sewer, for water, erosion control, grading, anything that the municipalities require. Sheet Set Manager also allows us to manage the keynnote properties and their visibilities. And it also adds efficiency to our workflows.

Sometimes, keynnotes, if you do it traditionally through a table and just stupid text, things don't get changed. They don't get updated across all the sheets, especially if your sheet set is large, 100 sheets, 200 sheets. This will ensure that it's always up to date. So we can apply those changes across the entire sheet set and avoid those repetitive edits sheet by sheet where tag techs have to go in and edit every table.

It also integrates keynotes across disciplines, so between MEP, civil, architecture, and land surveying. You can share that keynote data in other formats, land XML, CSV, or comma separated values. And it syncs keynotes-- the big thing is syncing it with architecture when you're working in civil and MEP drawings.

We can use Dynamo. Dynamo integrates with Sheet Set Manager so we can query keynnote data from the sheet sets. We can add new keynotes or modify existing. We can update the sheet references or views. And other than Dynamo, we need one package, the AMR Sheet Set Manager. It opens up all the functionality inside of Civil 3D for us.

It streamlines management and coordination, so those custom tools to track the keynotes. And it automates those repetitive workflows. And the biggest thing-- I can't harp on it enough-- it reduces our errors across the project. You pair that with some custom MLeaders using fields, and you're set.

So every time we talk about Dynamo, people want to see it in action. We're going to do things a little differently. In the past, we talk about the nodes and the wires. And we physically go through it. This time, I'm going to chunk it up into sections. In the attachments of this session is the DYN file, the Dynamo script. So don't worry if you want to work along. The script is there for you to be successful.

Every input we're going to talk about-- we're going to talk about the functionality and process of it, and then ultimately, the output. But we're not going to build it together. We want you to have that success. So when we talk about automating those repetitive tasks with Dynamo, Dynamo is kind of like the Swiss army knife that you see here. It's super versatile. And it can automate much more than just keynoting, but all these repetitive tasks.

We can use it to add new keynotes. We can batch create new keynotes from multiple design elements, generate keynotes from an existing database or spreadsheet-- and that's what we're going to do today. We can modify all of those existing keynotes. Sometimes, if your keynote list is pretty long-- the city of LA has one for erosion that's 120 keynotes long.

Sometimes it's easier to rerun it from the spreadsheet to make sure that it's updated correctly. And you'll be able to see that functionality, and globally update those keynote styles across the sheets through the table, updating all the different sheet references-- so syncing the sheet set after design changes and adding or removing sheet references for those keynotes. And then we can propagate those changes across the entire project.

And the nice thing about Dynamo is the automation saves so much considerable time. Well, not only some things that you do by hand are error prone. But this will reduce those hours of that manual data entry. It streamlines coordination between those disciplines too. And again, I'm going to talk often about preventing errors that occur doing manual workflows.

You avoid typos, inconsistencies, omissions. And again, it's just accurate across the entire project. Often, when we're submitting to different municipalities, they find the one little thing that was forgotten across the entire project-- just one note that could sideline your project and cause a delay. So we're going to try to avoid that.

And again, customizing these workflows for efficient keynote management, we can tailor the scripts to your individual or individual municipality needs. And we can create code libraries for common tasks. Pro tip-- you can use the script and an Excel file to create all of your sheets for your project, not just these keynotes that we're going to go over today.

And again, the tools are there for you to be successful. And how you want to utilize them is up to you. And then another pro tip, we do not need to interface with this script once it's written or the spreadsheet. So you can add this command to your ribbon or your tool palette to automate it. And the command is below.

So go into your CUI, write a new command, put this in there, the network location that your script is at, and the name of your script, one button, you can automate this. So we see this workspace here. We see an input that is pink, two of them, two green actions and an output.

Again, normally, in the past, we would work through this together. But let's just talk through it. So the very first input is going to be utilizing the AMR Sheet Set Manager library. You can search in there for Sheet Set MGR, and you'll see everything that you need.

So as we work through this workflow from left to right, what it's doing here, is it's reading the current sheet set that's open. And all of those DST files are a database. So it's reading the database. And it's giving us the sheets that are in it at the right. But when we jog underneath of it, what I'm doing is I'm asking it to pull the information from where the file is located on your network.

Oftentimes, when people work with this type of script, they set a path for the network. But what I want to do is I want to create it and have it pull the information for me. I don't want to go out and fetch anything. And I don't want to leave it up to my end users to do that either. The more things that can aggregate and bring to us, the more successful we're going to be. So that's what I've done here.

So the database file name and the directory name, it pulls it in for me. And it tells me, hey, it's located here on your drive, network drive, project folder, project name, however you do it. And then plus, I want to add a folder.

I want it to create a folder, backslash keynotes, because what ultimately we're going to do is trick Sheet Set Manager into thinking we have these drawings in this folder. And then bring it all together. So I want that entire file location with that slash keynote for me.

Here, we're going to be using a Excel spreadsheet. And so I browsed it from my C drive. But normally, since this was an AU 2013 session, normally, we would have it on the network with our project folder that's automatically generated. And I'm pulling that information in.

And so if we look at how we import data from Excel, the file, I'm bringing that in, the sheet name. Those are the workspaces or the tabs at the bottom of Excel. This one is called paving. I would highly suggest using one word, no spaces. Or if you need multiple words, do an underscore, street underscore plans, proposed underscore lighting.

And then these two Booleans, I want it to read as a string. And if you are familiar with code, strings, integers, those types of things, you really want to make sure that it reads it as a string, not a number. And then the show Excel, it's set to default to true. What that does, every time that you run this script, Excel will open up on your screen in front of you.

I don't necessarily want that. So I always set it to false. And here is an image of our Excel spreadsheet. So we see paving down below and sewer water, fire, and grade for grading. You'll see that I've got some columns defined here as number, title. And title is what's going to appear in Sheet Set Manager. But the description is really long. That's because those are the nodes that we're trying to convey to our municipality.

So don't show that in this Sheet Set Manager. It's kind of off to the side. It's the description of that sheet. And then you can edit all of that. And you'll see it's numbered backwards. When it queries, it starts at 0, which is actually row 1. And it sees that it's a header. So it skips down to the next line. It generates the number in the title and description in Sheet Set Manager.

Then it goes to the next line, and it reads 22. So what it does, if we put it in here backwards in Excel, it stacks it correctly in Sheet Set Manager. You could add a reverse to your list and reverse it. But this was just as easy. These are the items that you might encounter when you're working with this.

So let's move on to some of our actions. So what we've done is we've queried our database. We've pulled in our file path. And then we've added the data that we want to generate in Sheet Set Manager utilizing an Excel spreadsheet. Well, now we need to start bringing all this together and creating some of those actions.

So this one here creates our subset and adds it to our sheet set. So the main note in the middle, Subset.CreateNewSubset, well, let's just go through the top from the top down. So I'm plugging in our sheet set information so it knows the name of it, that database. And then you see, I've got name here. And that string is telling it, I want to write the paving construction notes.

Here in a minute, we're going to go through the fire department live, and you'll see how I can change it and updates. We don't necessarily need a description. But the new sheet set location is going to link back to that slash keynotes file that we concatenated.

What I like to do is I like to use the stock Autodesk template that is as small as possible with no custom styles or layers or anything in it. You could even use the AutoCAD one. Or you could use any that you have on your network for creating your sheets. Again, I just try to keep them as small as possible. And then the new sheet drawing template layout, DWT layout, I just call layout one.

So then feed that into my sub set. And then here, on that Sheet.AddToSubset, we need to change the lacing. Right click on the node, go to Lacing, and set it to longest. You don't need cross-platform. But where is at on auto will not work for this. It'll only read the first line of the Excel spreadsheet, and it only creates one. But longest will allow it to iterate through the entire list.

Again, in the attachments here for the session, this PDF, there is a link to the Dynamo primer so that you can read a little bit more about lacing. All right, so our data from our spreadsheet, we need to shape it. In data science, we shape data often. We're going to do the same thing here. So we're going to take that list in. And we're going to drop some items. We're going to drop that first row of the header.

So where it said title, number, description, we're going to drop it here. And then we're going to pick it back up on the right-hand side, where we're calling out the number, title, and description. I know I said, we're not going to talk much about lists and dictionaries. But I felt really bad because sometimes, they can get a little overwhelming.

So a list and Dynamo that uses that first index of zero, not one that I mentioned. And a list can be any data, so point data; x and y and z; curves, so a start point, an end point, and a radius. And then watch nodes display lists of indices on the left and data items on the right. Indices are important for working with data in lists.

And then a dictionary-- dictionaries represent collections of data. So that entire spreadsheet, each workspace, each tab at the bottom, we're going to take to a dictionary. And then we're going to split out the values. So we can see that out on the right. We see number, title, and description.

Then so our output, what are we going to physically see change inside of Civil 3D. Well, we're going to set our sheets to not plot. We don't ever need those to plot. We want to set that number that corresponds with our spreadsheet and the title and the description. Again, the title is what we see in the Sheet Set Manager pane. But the description is what we're going to put on our sheets.

Like I said, that was so much fun, let's do one together here. So this is the script that isn't attached here on the string. I'm going to go change it to fire to make it match my spreadsheet. Up here, I'm going to change it from paving construction notes to fire construction notes. So I can keep them organized and understand what's going on. I'm going to go hit Run.

And in about six seconds, we're going to see all of those notes that are generated and aggregated from our Excel spreadsheet populate over here on the left. It probably takes more time for the tool space pane to close than it did to actually write the information here. So very quickly, for us to trust team members to type that out, we did it quicker than what one of those lines would have taken to have typed or copy and paste into a table.

So let let's utilize the information that we've learned so far about writing information to Sheet Set Manager. And let's create a custom keynote legend now. So there's two ways you can do this. Dynamo can do that. But Sheet Set Manager has the Insert Sheet List Table functionality. And this allows you to dynamically insert a table that lists all of the sheets in your sheet set or that subset.

This table will update automatically when sheets or notes are added, removed, or reordered. And the pros of this are it automatically generates a sheet list table, based on the subset. It updates dynamically when those changes occur. And then you can customize the table style, the columns that are displayed. And then this is nice because you can maintain that consistency that we're all striving to do across all of those sheets.

We can display the keynote number, the full description. And every company has their own branding standard. So having the lines turned on, the borders, your particular text style, it's all up to you. I use the standard and the Civil 3D 2024 basic template. And I didn't modify anything. Dynamo can generate the custom legend also. But the Insert Sheet List Table is still the best solution.

So let's see that in action. So over here, we see our two subsets. We're just going to right click Insert Sheet List Table. I did set up one style that shows the sheet number and the description. And then here, I'm going to just go in, double click the header. Well, I'm setting the size to 5 inches now.

And then here in a moment, I go in and double click the header, highlight it, control A for all, and then hit Control F on the keyboard and go to my subset. I want that name in there. So if I change the name-- say, the fire department wants to see their name up there, Arvada Fire Department, South Platte Fire Department, Lincoln County Fire Department, whatever the case might be. We can make that change quickly across all the sheets.

And here, I added the paving notes really fast. Again, I'm setting the width of 5. You can define that in your table style in your templates. But again, I'm using the stock template. I'm just highlighting this, hitting Control F, and getting that field present. So that if I ever make changes to it, it propagates through quickly.

All right, so customizing our Multi-Leaders for the keynotes. Again, every section we've talked about, we've talked about consistency. So consistency-- by creating a custom Multi-Leader style, it allows for you to standardize the appearance of your keynotes across your drawings. Overall, in the image on the right, you'll see that we have keynotes for demo, sewer, site, storm, and water. And below, we have erosion.

We have two additional shapes called delta or and hexagon, in case we have additional styles or information we need to portray. Other than consistency, it's clarity. Custom keynote symbols in those formatted tag values help differentiate keynotes from regular MLeader callouts.

The accuracy, settings like the landing gap, the distance, and arrowhead width can be tuned to properly place keynote markers and organization. Stylized keynotes stand out and make it easier to organize and follow those keynote references in a busy drawing.

And again, you can go to your CUI, add them as a right-click functionality, so you don't have to always go to the ribbon, the annotation tab and do that. You can just allow your users and yourself to right click, add one quickly, and go. So we're going to see that here.

And so again, I'm using the custom 2024 template. I went in here. And I had one called Circle. And so I'm going in here. And I'm going to the fire notes. I'm going to add this, make sure it's set to sheet number, and go.

If the sheet were updated in Sheet Set Manager, and then you did a regional, it would update everywhere across your sheets. And again, I'm going to go in here. I'm going to add a different tag. And so they're quickly stylized so you can tell the difference on the screen.

So a recap of today's session-- we discussed the role and importance of keynotes in Civil 3D projects. We shared how Sheet Set Manager can be leveraged to do keynotes inside of Civil 3D. We showed how Dynamo can be utilized to maintain consistency with our keynotes.

Then we used Sheet Set Manager's Insert Sheet List Table function to quickly share those longer detailed keynotes using custom MLeaders with our keynotes, and then again, checking the attachment for the .DYN file so that you can take this, utilize it in your workflows, and have that success. Thank you. This has been Keynotes in Civil 3D: How to Hack Sheet Set Manager Like a Pro.