Advanced Topics Using the Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD

SAM LUCIDO: You guys, some of you I already know, and some of you have seen me before, and you've seen my giant head on the banner out there. That's the question I get asked the most. And the second question is, no, I didn't pay anybody to do that. I was about as surprised as you when I saw it. So anyway, Sheet Set Manager. I've done this for the last couple of years, and I've changed a few things over time, just because of--

Greg, how you doing, buddy? Just because of how things change with the software and how things have changed with my company and the way we do things, like Xrefs or templates. I went to a company, and they said templates only, templates only. And then slowly, we started hiring design-focused people, and they Xref a lot of things. So that's what came into play.

So I've got about 20-plus years using AutoCAD. My main focus is Civil 3D, so you'll see a lot of this. I mean, I remember a lot of people would say, how come you're not doing architectural stuff and Sheet Sets and so on and so forth? But it's the foundations here. You can change it for architectural, but I focus from a Civil background. So some of the drawings you're going to see are Civil related. Don't mind me, I'm getting my pointer.

OK, so my class summary-- and I think you guys know about me. You can read about me. You can find me on screencast. It's a tough group, putting pressure on me. Where? I can't do two things. That better? OK. All right, the Sheet Set Manager-- I'm not going to read my PowerPoint-- it's your ultimate document management tool. And that's what I always believed, because that's exactly what it does.

And I always say, if you use it-- my users, the first thing I do is just get them to put drawings in their sheets inside the Sheet Set Manager. That's fine. That's perfectly fine, if you even just use it for that way. You're still going to be able to navigate through things. And the three things I always say is most importantly, bring back value and knowledge to help you excel, because that's what I believe my job is. I just want to give you something you didn't know or something to spark your interest in something else, so when you go back to office, you can figure it out.

So what we're going to do today, we're going to understand, identify, and utilize advanced functions of the Sheet Set Manager. Yes, we're going to go through the basics, and then we're going to go through how to build a sheet. And then we're going to have some examples. All of the examples will be included in the data set that will be uploaded. So everything I do-- if you lose me or I go too fast, it's there. It's there. It's all documented.

You're going to populate data through the entire project, create a Sheet Set Template to use as a company standard, and publish the entire drawing package to PDF, DWF, direct print. The three things I always say-- and I did this in a screencast-- is the ability to collect, organize your data, number two to change like-- why we don't have a total number of sheets as a default value in the Sheet Set Manager is beyond me. Because it's a Sheet Set Manager, right? It controls sheets. It should have current sheet set total. And I've talked to them about it, but for some reason it doesn't. So that's one field we'll create.

And then my last is printing. The ability to print an entire set, because having five different people print sets at the same time, we've all done it. If there's a lot of CAD managers in here and there's a lot of people, we've all done it. This way you can control. If you use a page setup override, it doesn't matter who's printing the drawing. The override controls the PDF print. Therefore, if it's an engineer or scientist, they just pick 11 by 17 PDF, and they're good to go.

So the past, the present, and future. I was going to take this out, but I kind of wanted to just go through it very quickly. So I mentioned Heidi. And this is also in the data set too. Heidi Hewett. And you'll see here in the AutoCAD booth downstairs. She wrote the document "10 Steps to Make Sheet Happen." If you haven't read this, read it. Look at the lab assistants. You've got Sean, who I'm sure you know between the lines, Volker, and Lee. They've been around with Autodesk for a very long time. That's a very solid group of people.

And this document remains true. 2005, that's a long time ago. It's a long time ago, and they haven't updated it. But since then, you'll see there's a lot of people that have tried. "The Ins and Outs," "Cleaning up Your Sheets," "Custom Solutions." Now, this person used a third-party software, which I don't want to do that. I mean, there's some great third-party software out there that can handle the Sheet Set Manager. But I look at it from a cost perspective, as to what I'm buying, and for the company, and how many do I need, and so on and so forth, and can I do it within the base product?

And then me is "No Sheet! You Can Do That With the SSM." There is one other person, Adam Dirig last year did-- we both taught a Sheet Set class at the same time. I didn't even know it. And a lot of people said, well, they like his a lot better than mine. He's architectural, so if you look him up-- and I think I included him in there-- he does a really good job with call up blocks and views and stuff like that. So I wanted to point that out. So he comes from a different type of environment.

So I love this graphic over here on the right. I do a lot of research when I write documents and things like that. I always look on the Autodesk Knowledge Network, because they change. A lot of stuff just got updated in December 2015 in May, and you'll know someone's writing stuff along the way. And they came up with that little graphic there. And the only thing I did was I put a file cabinet in there, because that's what I believe. That's my theory on the Sheet Set. It's the file cabinet. Inside there are your folders, and then each layout is your sheet. So then you ask yourself in the simplest terms, can I have the same sheet twice in a sheet set? No, you have to make a copy, just like a piece of paper. So consider it a piece of paper.

OK, so the first thing I'm going to do is to create a new sheet set. And my PowerPoint isn't necessarily-- it's for me to keep time and to keep track of what we're doing. If you have any questions, let's try to hold it. I'll go slow and I'll go through it, and there's a couple of things I'll point out as I go. So I'm going to create a new sheet set, and I'm going to create it from the actual default from Autodesk. And I'm going to rename subsets. And I'm going place it in a folder. And I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to open up a drawing and go there. So I'll show you how to do that really quick. Any questions about the Sheet Set Manager itself? It's a DST file extension. Where you put that-- I put it in the root with my file. Some people put it in folders called sheets, or layouts, or whatever.

AUDIENCE: Can you set up [INAUDIBLE] coming from a civil background where we use [INAUDIBLE] and can different styles be set up to automate those?

SAM LUCIDO: Yes. If I understand your question, it's can you create different sheet sets for different disciplines? I think so. And so what we're going to do now is create-- so basically to answer your question, in my company I have one called Mechanical Architectural Civil. And basically, a sheet set's your skeleton. It's like what you ought to name your files. And it populates data depending on where your block and your data is.

So what I'm going to do here is I just use the wizard in AutoCAD. I went up on the application menu. And I selected New Sheet Set. And I'm just going to use Civil Imperial. I mean, I could have picked any one. And this is new from Autodesk. They have one that's called New Sheet Set. It's kind of plain, so it doesn't have anything in there. I'm going to use the Civil Imperial one.

And then what I'm going to do here is there's like four things I need to do. I need to actually name this to AU2016 Project. So the first thing I'm going to do is name my sheet set. So what this is right here, this is the actual DST file name. So whatever I name it, that's going to be the name. That's your project. So AU2016 Project.

And then like I said, I'm a Civil 3D user. And if any of you guys use Civil 3D styles-- everything's based on styles-- please give it a description so the next guy knows. I mean, you get in there-- and I just got into one, there were 10 surfaces, and I had no idea where anything was just because there was no description. So you give it a description for the next person. So my sheet set at Autodesk University. And then right here the ellipsis, this is where your DST file is going to be located. I'm going to dump it into something called My Project. So that's there, and the hierarchy is just the subsets and the folders that come along with it. I'm going to hit Next. And I'm going to hit Finish.

And what I'm going to actually do is save this drawing file into that folder, just as a drawing file, just because I want to show you what it created. So it created a DST file. And then here's all my default folders for my project. That's just me saying-- you guys have your own default folders, right? You have DWF, Outputs, Print, Sheets, Layout, whatever you do. Some people put X. Basically, I bet you have Xrefs, Images, Templates.

I like putting a template file on there, because the main question I get about the sheet sets when we first start doing it, why can't we just put it on the network, Sam? You can put the root of it on the network. But when you make it for your project, there's project data that's specific that if you're going to create new sheets and new sets, you create it with that template. But your base is what we're going to be doing right now.

So it lies right there. And I'm going to put it in the root with my drawing. That drawing one's nothing right now. So basically you see right here I have a sheet set. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to rename the subsets, like I said. So I'm renaming Grading Plans to Title Sheet, Utility Plans to Site Plans, Roadways and Profiles to Details, and then Working Files and Sanitary and Storm Sewer.

So this one you see I just right clicked. I'm going to put Title Sheet. Not changing anything yet. Properties, Site Plans. Have to look back on my PowerPoint see what I said. Details, Working Files, and then I'm going to remove one. So I'm going to do this one as Details. And this is you going through your project and going, OK, I've got a list. I know there's some PNIDs, there's some slide plans. These subsets-- and this one I'm going to name working-- that was mid-thought-- these subsets are just organizational tools.

So I'm going to call this one Working Files. And this, I'm going to put Do Not Publish, because sometimes I'll put the survey files in there, and then I'm going to delete this. Remove subset. Cool. And there's no Save button on these. They save as you go. So that's it, right? Well not exactly. There's a relationship between the DST and the DWT, it's like they get married, or boyfriend-girlfriend or whatever.

And they have to come together and share data. So that's when you bring in your title block. So you can see right here, I have my default title block. Actually, I'm going to get out of this one. Cancel. So you see I have a title block here. And it's just attributed data. Now, for you Xref folks, you would simply-- my understanding is how I would do it is I'm still going to have the line work in there to begin with to kind of get the positioning of my attributes and my fonts. They don't have to be attributes. They can be text. But they're going to be in the sheet.

And so what we want to do now is start actually putting this into the drawing and kind of making fields out of it. So what we're going to do now is-- back up to my PowerPoint. So we started the new drawing, and we're going to save it as 11/15 2016 G100. We're going to save it right in the same location. Because remember, it's all about a relationship with these two things. So I've got this template. I don't want to save the template file, because then you're saving your specific template file to something as project-specific.

So I'm going to do a File, Save As. I'm going to go to my project. I'm going to go 2016 11/15 and then underscore-- let's do underscores-- 11/15-G100 And this isn't actually the real name of it. And then I can actually delete this file. Let's get out of here. Right click. I love this right-click Open File Location. They didn't have it years ago. I'm going to delete this. I just want to show you where it was located.

So see we're in the same spot. We're kind of living together, hanging out together, we're friends. And now that they're in the same spot, I want to build a relationship between the two files. So how do I do that? Well, I can simply-- this is just a layout in paper space, and I can simply just right click and Import Layout as a Sheet. Browse to that drawing, my project, the first one. OK, available for import, import it. So it's right there.

I'm going to rename and renumber that. So I'm going to give it number one for my sheet number one. And the sheet title, I'm going to use G100. Now, this is all what you do for your company. You might not use C100, G100, A100, 200, that's national CAD standard stuff. You could do one, two, three, four, or five or site plan. This is your title, and how you populate this stuff. That's why that field sheet that I gave you is important, if you can lay that out to how you-- I would even do that sometimes just for the project and then hand it to somebody and say, this is how it's set up, or put it in a folder project setup. It helps the people that are moving forward.

This over here, I don't want to prefect with the sheet number, because it's going to rename my layout. And over here if I started a new one, that will actually change your drawing name. So be very careful with this. If this isn't grayed out, that means you're creating a new drawing, and it'll actually create it on your hard drive. So I'm going to hit OK. And you'll see we have now the sheet set that's in here. If I double click it, it's just in there. Now, there's nothing done yet with it. But it's in our drawing set.

So now the first thing you want to do is the project manager gave us the project information. Most of the time when I get a project, it says, Sam, here's the project. Here's the location. Here's the name of it. You got to get that information up front from people. So we've got certain project information. So we're going to populate our data for information. So the number would be GEN9539_01.

The project name, we're going to use Autodesk University 2016. The phase. You know, Sheet Set Manager Project. You can use these however you want. And the milestone, I always use as the submittal date. It's the date on the title block. Not the Rev date, the actual date that's submitted. So 11/15. I must have thought I was teaching this yesterday. 2016. I'm not going worry about this stuff yet.

Any of this stuff up in here, we'll talk about this. This is why the advanced part of the sheet sets-- when you get sheet sets, you'll see that this stuff-- I swear, when I get them from companies, 80% of the time these are blank. Or they're defaulted like they are right here. Tier default. Nobody uses that. Well, I can't say nobody. But my favorite one up there is the Model View tab, and I'll show you why.

So we populated our project control data. That's the control data that comes from Autodesk. Now, then I just exited, so it's saving it. Now like I said, I really wish they'd put in there sheet total in there, because it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense not to have that up in there. But it doesn't right now, so we're going to create that. So now we've got some things in there, and now we're going to actually look on the properties of our drawing. And we're going to actually-- what I'm doing is I'm right clicking the Sheet Set Manager and I'm clicking Properties.

So now the first thing I want to do, see down in here? This is what we want to do with this template. These are the custom properties that we're going to use for our company standard. There's two things we can do. We can add sheet custom properties and sheet set custom properties. So individual sheets drawn by, check by, or revisions even sometimes, or sheet set. When I first did this for the company, we did everything globally.

So the drawn by, check by was done globally. Next thing you know, I had different people working on the process work, had different people doing the electrical. And that didn't work. So we ended up using cheat custom fields. But that's sort of similar to just editing an attribute anyway, right? But you can just keep in mind, it's just a field. You can still edit it in a drawing, if that's the case. You're just back to the way you used to do it. There's different scenarios for different projects. Still hear me?

So I'm going to delete their custom data. I'm going to go in here and edit custom properties, and I'm going to delete everything they have. But you can keep it. I mean, it's up to you. So what we're going to do is we're going to edit, we're going to add some data. Not a whole bunch, because we don't have a lot of time. But to give you an example, I think the one I have for work has probably 50 fields in there.

And they're different. But they all work. But the problem is-- and you'll see when I start editing custom properties-- there's a reason why I hit Edit Custom Property and I'm going to hit Add. So what I'm going to do here is I had the option of the sheet or the sheet set. So I'm going to do the sheet. So I'm going to do 01 drawn by 02 checked by. Why the 01, 02? It doesn't sort it and you can't move it. And if I did drawn by and check by, it's going to be backwards on my thing. So there's some upfront thought that has to go into this. You have to stay organized as you go through it.

And I use numbering. Some people use letters. I use the numbering system. It seems to work pretty good for me. So I'm going to go 01, drawn by. And then the value. OK, let's talk about this really quick, because a couple of people in here actually had comments on here. So I've been using the code percent percent U, which basically is a blank field that underlines nothing.

There's another way to do it that a lot of people like better, which is if you have the number pad on your keyboard, Alt-0160. You've got to do Alt-0160. We'll do it both ways. That one seems to be more popular than the other one. They both work. I've tried them both, but there have been certain cases where one doesn't work and the other one doesn't work. They both work, though. Because if you don't do the blank field, the percent percent U, Alt-0160, you're going to get the four dashes, and they'll print.

We used to print sheets for windfarms, and it was so annoying. And then they used to put them on layers and freeze them and things like that. So finally, we figured out, hey, we can use these different codes to get a blank field. So that comes up a lot. So what I'm doing is I'm hitting the Alt key, and I'm doing 0160 and hitting Enter. And you see how it move just a tad? I'm just going to do it for these two, and them I'm going to add another one, 02 check by.

And this is all in the handout. This is what I changed in the handout. I showed both ways. Whatever your preference is. Sometimes when I see the percent , I can see it, and I know it's been done. And when I first did it, I didn't have the number pad a keyboard. And then I thought to myself, I was thinking, I can't do that. Everybody has a number. They don't need it once you put it in, right? I was like, what was I thinking? But it works. So we're going to do Alt-0160. Hit OK. Hit OK.

And you'll see, I've got two fields that showed up in Here. on the sheet custom properties that are drawn by and checked by. So now we have to add sheet set custom properties. Oh see, here it's in the handout, if I showed you. Because I actually showed on page 22-- I showed how it actually gives us space in there. And thanks to the people online who helped me out with that, because it's very interesting. I always try to look for the most effective way, but they both work in my world. But they might not both work in yours, so you know you have two options.

So I'm going to hit OK. And basically, nothing happened yet. We're still just saving as we go in the Sheet Set Manager. We haven't done any linking yet. We've done are drawn by and check by. So here's where we come out to that piece where it says-- this one. So we're going to enter our data. So we're going to do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. And you see how that went?

So most of you have the sheet. If you don't have the sheet, it's in your actual handout. So we're going to do one, which is the current Sheet Set Project name, and two is the current-- well actually, this is a little backwards from the one you have-- and the current Sheet Set title. So basically what we're going to do is start populating this stuff. So I have my attributes there. So you're going to see here, this is my name.

So I'm going to double click this. I'm going to bring up the Enhanced Attribute Editor. There's other ways to get to this. I mean, however you get to it's fine. And so I've got Title Sheet and Drawing Index. So this is my current sheet name, right? So I'm going to hit the ellipsis to bring that up. You see it's a multiline text. Doesn't have to be. The restriction with the multiline text or the problem with it is sometimes in sheet sets it'll stretch. You can't lock it. You think you can, and you think you did it, and then you print, and your title's like that. So in some cases, just use dynamic text, one, two, three lines like I used to do. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'll just keep it for multiline for now.

So Insert Field, right click, Current Sheet Description. And you'll see it has the four lines. So the reason for the four lines is I haven't given it a name yet. So it's a field, I just haven't done anything yet. If I actually gave this drawing a name, like if I went in here and said Properties, Current Sheet Description. Well, this is my title sheet. Hit OK. Now if I do a regen, you see how it changes? So that's my title sheet.

So we've got another one here. We've got this one here. Autodesk University 2016. So this is current sheet set, project phase. Well, I've got current sheet's our project name and phase. So I'm going to go back to this. So I'm just going to highlight my text here, insert field. Current Sheet Set project name is Autodesk University. And then phase. And you know, these are just examples. And you see I have-- the same multiline text, but fields in both positions. Insert Field, Current Sheet Set Project Phase, Sheet Set Manager project. .

OK, well that looks good. We've got some of it done. So you see, now we know that they're connected, because everything is in there. So now what we want to do is start actually adding the other sheets to it. We want to add the sheet total, which is the first one. Now we're going to go from just the sheet custom properties to the ones that are already in there to the ones that we created.

So we're going to draw by and check by. So we're going to double click it. I'm going to hit Drawn By. And you see, this is just a piece of text. I'm going to delete it. I'm going to click Insert Field, current sheet custom. And when you pull it down, you'll see you have your two options available, drawn by. And you'll see how it added like a blank field in there kind of, and then check by. Nothing's going to show up, because we haven't gave anybody any rights to that sheet yet. And then right click, you can delete it or just override it. Insert Field, Current Sheet Set, Custom, Check By.

So that looks pretty good. So now that's move down the path. And we're going to go 00 Sheet Total, 01 Sheet Title, 02 Drawing Scale. So I'm just kind of going in sequence as to how this title block flows. So we've got sheet number is the next one right here. You'll see it's number one, so I'm going to right click. I'm going to Insert Field. Current sheet number. It's just a number right here. Current sheet number. And we know that's number one. And you can see that one actually populated, because we had it in one there. And I'll go right to the next one. I'm going to Insert Field.

Now remember, this is a Current Sheet Set Custom. I always get tongue twisted when I-- I mean, it gets crazy. So it's Sheet Set Custom Data. And you'll see we've got to add our data in there yet. So we're going to add. So we added that in there. We're going to hit OK. So now let's go and add our populated data up in here, because we only have the two. So we're going to add custom properties again, and we're going to add. And this time we're going to do sheet set. So we want 00 Sheet Total. And then this time, I'll do the percent percent you.

And Sheet Set, make sure you check that. Add 01 Sheet Title. And the reason I did one was for the title sheet at the end. And then we can call this-- we can actually give this a name, like No Sheet. My class was called No Sheet last year. I did this at AU. And that's where the sheet's at. And it doesn't-- it's not even being used, but it's there if I need it.

Like, the one I just did-- changes I've made recently are-- we have, on our projects, we'll have a project name. Then we added a custom fields for the address line one, the address line two, and then the city and the state. And then we put them in there. Whether we put it on there or not is a whole 'nother story. But they're there. So I'm going to go again.

So I have 01 Sheet Title, 02 Drawing Scale. And this was just in there just to be in there. We're going to default the value to, as shown, and I guess, or shown. And then we'll get to our revisions. And again this one's under debate for whether you do it per sheet or per the sheet set.

It's great if your revisions-- if you're submittals all go out at the same time every sheet, but that doesn't happen in a perfect world. I mean, we send out different sets at different times. So you might want to consider putting those in the actual sheet custom properties. How I handle that is, I have one called Global, and one Regular. So it'll control-- and then depending on which template they choose-- I know it sounds silly, but depending on which template they choose, it will control either one.

You can't control this. That's one of those things you really can't control on the submittals. You can't, because sometimes one sheet'll go out. So you just can't do it.

So I'm at the revision part of this whole deal. So, I'm going to do 03. And I did a, b, and c, and I did revision, Rev1, number. And I'll do the %%U sheet set. I'm going to add another one, 03b.

And the only reason being is because they're related to each other, is 03. So I don't go, 3, 4, 5. I want threes. Those three are together. There's no way you're going to ever revision one or not have a description and a date. At least I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.

So we have a revision description, so Rev-- Rev1 Description. And then %%U, and that's for the sheet set. Case doesn't matter, but I'm just being me. And then we're going to add 03C, Revision One, Date. And then %%U. Hit OK. And you see, we have this nice sheet set that we created for our company that has this default data populated that links to our title block.

This stuff up in here we talked about, the advanced stuff. You can't do that until you get your template-- your project set up. Because you don't know where the model view's going to be. You can't set that up anywhere. You don't want it on the C drive.

The model view's your folder, actually, and you can have more than one. Call up blocks, you can assign them per the sheet set, per the folder. Yes, you can put them on a network and kind of go that route, but I don't recommend doing that, actually. I like doing it in there.

So I'm going to hit OK. We're back to our actual-- these two are still building a relationship together and sharing things. So we're back to our total number of sheets where I was before. So I go down to Sheet Total, and now when I right click and I hit Insert Field, I go to Current Sheet Set Custom, and I have Sheet Total-- which I spelled wrong, which was great, but-- and you'll see there comes up %%U. And then we're going to go through everything. The revisions, right click, Insert Field, Revision A, Revision Description, Insert Field, Revision One Description. And then the last one, Insert Field, Revision Three, Date.

And then we had a scale in there somewhere. So right there is the scale, too. That one I just wanted to show you. So Drawing Scale, and you see how it's shown? I just wanted to show you how actually populate it. See how it shows up?

Oh, my miles-- I forgot one. I actually have two more. So I have my current sheet title, which is C100. Insert Field. So that's Sheet 1, Current Sheet Title, I want to do that, and then my milestone. Insert Field. OK.

Looks pretty good. Everything's in there. You got it, so it's done, right? Not necessarily. But that's the basics of-- that's a very, very basic connection between two pieces of data. So what I want to do now, I've got this-- I usually test it. You know, I'll enter the fields, make sure they all work. If you get the hashtag or whatever, you know your attributes broken or your link is broken. If it doesn't fill out and it's blank, just check all that stuff before you move any forward.

So now what you want to do is, you've got these two things. So we've got this AU 2016 project, right? So I'm going to remove this. I'm going to actually save my drawing. And I'm going to remove it from my sheet set. And then I'm going to actually save this drawing as a template.

So what I'm going to end up doing is saving this as AU2016template, and I'm going to make it a DWT file. I'm not going to save it here. I'll show what happens. You can save it right here. So I'll make it AU2016template, just like that, what it's going to be called.

And then you can bring it up and call it whatever it is. My civil default folder sheet set. My generic folder sheet set. My figures. 11 by 17 sheet set. It's the basic template. Don't try to get too complicated in the beginning, because you have to make it project specific.

So where are these located? So when you right click and you hit Options, under Files, under Template Settings, you're going to place the DWTs of these files in these two folders. Now, you don't have to do that. Your templates may be put-- mine aren't put in that folder. They're put on a CAD 2016-- you know, handling all just templates. So you put them where your templates go. And then when you do a new drawing, or a new sheet set, it'll see it.

So let me show you where that's at. Let me go back to my PowerPoint and see how we're doing here. So, we edited our attribute data, and you have the handout for this. It's kind of just a guide. And like I said, I would just take the data I have, take my title block, and for you XREF people-- still do it that way, and then just get rid of all the lines. And call it your whatever you do, 22 or 34 border, 24 by 36. Mine's called-- what is it called? 22 by 34 xref, and the other one's called 22 by 34 data. Or something like-- 22 by 34 title block, and then 22 by 34 title block data. So the data is my sheet.

And consider sheets are just pieces of paper, like I said. A layout is a sheet. So the XREF thing-- it's a big deal. We got in a lot of fights at work over this thing. I'm telling you, it's a big deal.

But people don't believe Sheet Set Manager works because they say, oh, I can XREF it, Sam. Why do I need to do that? And in some cases, it's true. In some cases you can. So you can use a combination of the two. But you sure as heck can't remove sheets and add sheets like you can, without Sheet Set Manager.

So we did that. We removed the sheet, and we saved it to AU2016template, and we saved it in this location. Number one, and number two. So now you're feeling pretty awesome right now, because you just did it. You've got your templates. I have a very talented daughter does graphics stuff for me. She's great.

So you have two files, you've saved them. That's the basic first part of this class. I know I took my time. I wanted to go a little bit slow, but I wanted-- you've got to build the foundation before we jump right into some of the other stuff.

OK, so now what we're going to do-- now we're going to create a project with our template. And we're going to see how it works. So, we are going to-- there we go. We're going to create a new project. And we're going to start a new sheet set with the wizard.

And you notice how it shows up, that little DST file that we saved shows up there. And we're going to go through and-- I think I'm going to give up on this. We're going to go through and actually start making our project for our specific project in the dst location, and then sample it. So we'll do that right now.

So I'm actually going to get out of AutoCAD. I'm going to get out AutoCAD, get out of my sheet sets, and I'm going to reopen AutoCAD. I'm going to go back to that project folder real quick. I'm going to delete this stuff. You've got some XREFs in there.

This is my typical project folder. There's nothing in my template. So this is how-- OK, we start a project, I make a project number. So this is what we do up front. I got some blocks I'm going to use. I'm not going to use that.

There's the title of it. Some details, I have a detail sheet that I've XREF'd in there. Well, I haven't XREF'd. I've created views that we're going to place views on the drawing. Then we have a DWF, a D-W-F fax from client is usually what we have.

Images, PDFs, scripts, templates, and XREF. Pretty basic stuff. So that's where we're going to put our sheet set. So what we're going to do is go back to AutoCAD, launch it up again. And you'll notice in the handout, this part of the handout is more or less like a tutorial. So it's going to have highlighted things, like steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, so you can create your own. So you can follow it along, even if you don't have the same version as me.

So, I'm going to actually do New Sheet Set from my Access Sheet Set Manager. If it's not there, hit Control-4, or you can actually hit it up here on the application menu, up here on the top. Example Sheet Set, AU2016project is what we created. And you're going to see my Sheet Set Properties. Isn't that cool? Everything's there that you did. Whatever you did is already there. We built that.

So I'm going to cancel out of there. And I want to call this AU2016projectproject. And then, this one, I just-- my sheet set template at Autodesk University. I'm going to right click that, and put it into the project folder. I'm going to keep this checked, because I want the hierarchy that we created.

If I don't check that, all those subsets go bye-bye. They go away, which-- some people don't like subsets, because I always say they're considered like fences. Like, when you right click and do a property on a sheet, you can go Next, Next, Next. If you have a subset there, you're not going Next. You're stopping. And I'll show you that.

Hit Next, and then hit OK. So you see, here's my data. Here's some of the stuff we did. You see how it's got blocks and call blocks attached to it too, but we'll go through that. So there's our project, right? Now, we have that relationship between the two files, and we sort of-- they went to live in separate places for a while. Now we're going to bring them back together, because they share they share things.

So now I'm going to do a new drawing. Just like I did a new sheet set, a drawing. And you're going to see that I have something called AU2016template, which is what we just created. Now, I don't want to make edits to this. I want to save this to my project folder, because that's what I want it to be. I want it to be in my project folder.

This is our first sheet. So what I want to do this-- well, let me take the viewport out of there. And then I'm going to do a File, Save As my project, and then we're kind of doing the same thing we did before. 2, 0, 1, 6, 11, 15, G-100. OK, so there's our project. I'm going to right-click my title sheet, Import Layout As Sheet. I'm going to browse for that drawing.

Now I'm going to insert it to my sheet set. I'm going to right-click. I'm going to rename and renumber my Sheet 1 G-100. Now, I'm going to do a regen, and I want you to see everything changed. So now you see these-- see how we've got some blank. They're not going to print.

There's that Alt-1060. And the %%U up here just won't show up. So now this is actually part of our project now. This is kind of an important step, because now we have this dr-- now they're in there. They're in there. If I right-click-- if I right-click this, and I open my file location, this is exactly what I want to see.

I've got my DSD file and my DWG file, they're back together. They have a relationship now. Now, I want to create the template file for this specific project. Page Set Ups, Sheet Titles, whatever it might be. Something that changed. For here, it's just the Autodesk University thing, but this is where you would do your-- this is where you would do your project name, your city and state, the total number of sheets, all that kind of stuff, you would populate in here.

So the first thing I want to do-- and since I want to make this my project template, I want to actually start looking at Page Setup Overrides. So the first thing I'm going to do is type page, and then if you take page, you do Page Setup, Page Setup, whatever. I have a page setup in there. I'm going to hit modify, and just take a look at it. So it's a 22 by 34 PDF on monochrome.

Let's just say I want another one. I'm going to do new. I'm going to do the same-- it's going to pull the pop-- it's going to populate the same data from that one, 11 by 17 PDF. And I'm going to change just the 17 by 11. And then I'm do 1:2, because it's half the size. Everything else is OK. I'll just set 22 by 34 to current, hit Close, and there, that's our drawing for our actual project.

It's interesting in here, I didn't actually show where to put it-- how to save it. So the first thing we're going to do to this one is, we're going to-- now that we've got everything in there we want, we want to use this for Page Setup Overrides and other things. So we're going to save, do a Save As, put it in our template folder. I'm just going to save it as a drawing file first. Actually, I'll do a Save in this one first. And I'll do a File, Save As Template. I'm going to save it like that.

And then I'm going to do a File, Save As, and I'm going to save it as a DWT. It's going to default back there, but I want it in my project template, so I want it there. So, take that name. I'll just do it right here, DWT. And it's going to come up and this is going to say My New Project at AU.