LESSON 4-10

Concept:
Sheet sets are the digital version of the rolled up groups of drawings shoved in the back corner behind you. Actually they are the next logical progression from Pack 'n' Go. This time though, you are just sending the layouts and not your actual CAD file. There are a lot of variables involved when you use these, but you will give you an idea of what's involved. Sheet sets can be published as DWF's or opened up in ACAD 2005 (.dst extension).

COMMAND	KEYBOARD	ICON	DESCRIPTION
Sheetset	Sheetset		Opens the Sheetset Manager

Procedure:
The first thing you would do is check that you have all your 'ducks in a row' concerning the drawings and layouts that you plan to publish. It sounds obvious, but you don't want to keep creating Sheet Sets after you find the layouts are scaled wrong, duplicated or whatever.
Start the command, SHEETSET, or use the File > New Sheet Set menu option to invoke the command (for those that like icons, it looks like the rolled up sheets shoved in the corner behind you.

Once you have the command started, you'll see what could possible be the largest dialog box you've ever seen with so little info:

In this example, use some existing drawings that are part of the default samples provided. you Press "Next" and get taken to Step 2.

This seems fairly simple, give your set a name(1), a description(2), tell AutoCAD where to save the file(3). There is a button for "Sheet Set Properties" that gives you some more options on the set (below) - you can even create your own custom fields here.

For the sake of simplicity, this lesson will not cover this.

The next tab is where you can select the "folders" where your drawings are saved and add them to the Set.

Press the "Browse" button and navigate to the folder you want to use (you can repeat this to add more folders). Once you have all the files listed (with their layouts), you now can turn on or off the layouts as you need to them.

The last step is to confirm what you just did in the final tab of the wizard.

You see a list of layouts that will be part of this Sheet Set - if it's what you want, press "Finish".

After finishing the wizard, you are back in AutoCAD and ready to work with the Sheet Set.

If you double-click on a sheet name, it opens up in a layout tab. you have other options as well.

The view list (second tab down) allows you to zoom directly to any saved view that was part of the layout (a new, great use for views).

Circled, is a button that lets you "Publish to DWF". This will publish whichever Sheets you have highlighted (all in one file).

In the "Details" section, you have the option of either viewing the file information, or a thumbnail.

Of course there is a LOT more to these, but this lesson is aimed at explaining the concepts behind the command.