Good Question: Xref attachment in sheet sets

Today’s good question comes from Matias, who asked about importing detail drawings into a sheet using the sheet set’s model views tab. As he pointed out, everything looks fine when you drag the view onto a sheet, but when you select the model tab, all the xrefs are on top of each other.

This is, believe it or not, the proper behavior for the sheet set manager. When you drag a view from the Model Views tab, AutoCAD automatically attaches the associated drawing as an xref using the insertion point of 0,0. It looks fine in the layout viewports because AutoCAD controls the layer visibility on a per-viewport basis. However, if you select Model tab, the default layers for all the xref files are turned on and it might look like a big mess. It can seem a little crazy given our traditional way of working in Model space. However, the process of using sheet sets is meant for us to edit only the sheet geometry in the sheet drawings, and edit the model information in the xref files. If you can get in the habit of selecting and opening the xref file through the layout viewport, the overlapping geometry in model space shouldn't bother you… if you don’t select the Model tab, you’ll never see it!

Thanks to Matias for the good question… and PLEASE, don’t let the answer deter you from using sheet sets. Those of us that have made the leap, can’t live with out them!