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It has been great to see software evolve throughout my time in the Civil Engineering industry. The Sheetset Manager (SSM) has been one of those evolutions. Before SSM, sheets that were added to plan sets often caused issues, especially when another user adds sheets without your knowledge. For those that remember those days, you’d run a batch plot for an entire set of plans and then realize after printing that the majority of your plans have the wrong sheet numbers labeled.

With SSM, not only can we control our numbers, but we can also see which drawings are open, what numbers those sheets are and, most importantly, keep track of our sheet names. This ensures they match the cover sheet. It is hard to imagine our AutoCAD and Civil 3D workflows without this helpful feature. I thought I was an expert in all things SSM, since I have used the feature for many years now. However, someone taught me a skill that took SSM to the next level.

For those that are familiar with SSM, you have built templates and drawings that are configured to utilize the SSM fields. This is a best practice I recommend for quick and efficient sheet creation, but at the click of a few buttons, you can have an entire set of plans created and ready-to-go. Let’s explore the current workflow and this new workflow.

Current SSM Workflow

First, we’ll look at the common workflow.  Most companies have templates or drawings built for water, sewer, streets, paving and grading. This makes it easy to do a SAVEAS for plan production sheets. Companies that use SSM can easily import their drawing, rename and renumber it accordingly, and off they go.  Then, they can then make copies of those sheets as needed. Since this is a great workflow that makes your life easier, you may think this is the best it will ever get using out of the box SSM!

New SSM Workflow

While the common workflow is considered best practice, there is room for improvement. This workflow can advance with a ready-to-go Sheetset. In the following example, I have a set of drawings:

All of these drawings are associated with a Sheetset in the Sheetset Folder. All Xrefs for my drawings, such as title block and other drawing files, are stored in the Xref folder. When I create the blank drawings from my standard template, I add in all the standard information I want to have on that kind of sheet. For example, water would have all my standard water notes and details, sewer would have the same, etc.

Here is the result, but for all of your different sheets mentioned earlier:

The next step is the normal process, so add your drawings to your SSM. Then, save this in what will be the template folder.

Now you will start to see the benefits of using this method. Next time you need a 20-page set of plans to get started, just simply copy a version from your template folder to your new project folder.  As long as you follow the above steps and all of your Xrefs are set to relative, your sheets should have titleblocks, notes and everything else you had upon setup. In less than a minute you have all of those pages automatically organized for you. Additionally, if you don’t want any of those sheets, just simply erase them from the SSM.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, one of the best things about working with AutoCAD and Civil 3D is that even after using it for years, I still find better, more efficient ways to doing things.  This method was an “aha” moment for me and I hope it will help you set up future projects.

For those who haven’t used Sheetset Manager yet, give it a try! Take your time with Sheetsets and practice on a test project.  You’ll find it’s a great tool to have in your toolbox and it will quickly become invaluable in your workflows.

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This blog is written by Civil Technical Specialist Felix Cortez. If you have any questions or need help with your Civil or AutoCAD needs, please email us at whyatg@atgusa.com.

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