AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 2. Sheet Sets without Regret

Sheet sets were introduced in AutoCAD 2005 and are still a relatively new concept in AutoCAD. They're the digital equivalent of an old drafting concept called a drawing set. A drawing set contains numerous drawings, and often includes references to details, sections, and elevations within the drawing set, along with a drawing or two that contain an index of all drawings in the set.

Note

AutoCAD LT does not support sheet sets.

Overview of a Sheet Set

Sheet sets take advantage of the existing drawings you have been creating over the years. A sheet set contains sheets, which are references to paper space layouts — sorry, you can't use the Model tab as a sheet. If you use the Model tab for plotting and publishing today, you need to switch to the use of paper space layouts to take advantage of sheet sets. A sheet set and all the references to its sheets are stored in a file with the DST extension and are accessed through Sheet Set Manager (see Figure 2-1). By using references to the drawing files, you can use your own directory structures while taking advantage of the benefits of sheet sets. Some of these benefits are

• Fast file access: Because a sheet set knows right where a file is located, drawings can be accessed in a short amount of time without the need to browse and open a file.

• Consistent drawing creation: Sheet sets can be set up to specify the directory structure and location in which new sheets should be created when they are added to the sheet ...