Sheets Happen! Step 4: Importing existing layouts

If you’ve been following along with this Sheets Happen series, you created your sheet set using existing drawings. This method enabled you to quickly create a new sheet set with pointers to the layouts in those drawings. But what if you have other drawings that you want to include in the sheet set? For example, maybe a consultant emailed you a new drawing or maybe you forgot to include a few drawings when you first created the sheet set. You can “import” additional drawing layouts into your sheet set using the SSM. Actually, I don’t care for the term “import” because, as you learned in my first Sheets Happen post, the sheets in the SSM sheet list are nothing more than shortcuts or pointers to layouts in drawings. So, when we say “import” what we really mean is that you can create a new pointer to an existing drawing.

1. Right-click on the sheet list and choose Import Layout as Sheet. Where you right-click determines where the new sheet will be added to the sheet list. If you right-click on the sheet set name, the new sheet will be added to the end of the sheet list. If you right-click on a subset, the new sheet will be added to the end of the subset. If you right-click on a sheet, the new sheet will be added below that sheet. Regardless of where you right-click, you can always drag and drop the new sheet to a proper location.

2. Choose Browse for Drawings and select the drawing that contains the layout you want to add. After you select a drawing, all of that drawing’s layouts are listed in the Import Layouts as Sheets dialog box. You can select the layouts that you want to import. You have the option to prefix the sheet title with the file name.

3. Choose Import Checked. The newly added sheet is just like any other sheet in the sheet list. You can rename, renumber and reorganize your sheets as necessary.

As you implement sheet set functionality one step at a time, you and other members of the project team can continue to create new drawings using traditional methods and then import them into the sheet set using this method.