Archiving, Publishing, and eTransmitting Sheet Sets

The sheet sets feature is a great way to keep your project files organized while you are creating your drawings. You can also use the Sheet Set Manager to turn your set into a package that can be easily sent to others who might need to work on the drawings or view them. Or you can use the Sheet Set Manager to create an archive of your set for safekeeping at the end of the project.

You might have noticed that there are several options on the Sheet Set shortcut menu. Right-click on the main title of your sheet set in the Sheet Set Manager's Sheets list and you see the Archive, Publish, and eTransmit options:

• The Archive option lets you collect your sheet set files into a ZIP archive file.

• The Publish option offers a convenient way to convert your set into a format that can be easily read by others who do not have AutoCAD.

• The eTransmit option offer a way to easily transport your sheet set to others who might need to work on the set.

In this section, you'll take a closer look at these three sets of features for sharing your sheet set.

Archiving Your Sheet Set

One of the more important housekeeping jobs you'll do is archiving projects that have been completed. If you organize your projects by folders, you could archive the entire folder for a project, but in so doing, you could be archiving many files that are really not part of the set.

The sheet set Archive option lets you be more selective about the files you archive. You can exclude files in the sheet set or include other files that are not necessarily AutoCAD drawings.

When you are ready to archive your sheet set, you can open the Archive dialog box by doing the following:

1. Right-click the name of your sheet set in the Sheets list of the Sheet Set Manager.

2. Select Archive from the shortcut menu. The Archive A Sheet Set dialog box appears.

   

The Archive A Sheet Set dialog box offers three tabs. The first tab you see is the Sheets tab. This shows you the name of the sheets that will be archived. The check boxes by the sheet names indicate the sheets that will be archived. If you decide that you want to leave a sheet out of the archive, you can remove the checkmark. The unchecked file and its associated Xref will not be archived.

The Files Tree tab offers a slightly different view of the archive. Instead of just showing you the sheet names, the Files Tree shows you the actual filenames that will be archived. These include support files such as the Sheet Set data file and the template file associated with the sheet set.

The Files Table tab shows you even more detail about the files that will be archived, such as the path , the AutoCAD version, and similar information; it also includes information on the resource files that are Xrefs in the sheet files.

In both the Files Tree and Files Table tabs, the Add A File button enables you to include other files with the archive that are not necessarily AutoCAD related but are part of the overall project. You can use this option to include Excel or Word documents that represent correspondence or worksheets.

Modifying the Archive Setup

By default, the sheet set Archive feature saves files in the .zip archive format. You can change the way the archives are saved, as well as the location of the archive, the archive name, and several other settings through the Modify Archive Setup dialog box.

Click the Modify Archive Setup button in the Archive A Sheet Set dialog box to open the Modify Archive Setup dialog box.

Here you can make adjustments to the properties of the archive file, including the type of file to create and whether to preserve the file structure.

Saving the Vital Statistics of Your Archive

You can also view and save pertinent information about your archived sheet set by clicking the View Report button in the Archive A Sheet Set dialog box. Clicking this button opens the View Archive Report dialog box.

You can view the vital statistics regarding your sheet set archive. You also have the option to save the information in a file by clicking the Save As button. This opens a standard save file dialog box enabling you to assign a name and location for the information file. It is stored as a plain-text file with the .txt filename extension.

Batch Plotting and Publishing Your Sheet Set

Another advantage to using sheet sets is that you can print all the sheets in a set at once and in the background. The Publish option in the Sheet Set shortcut menu enables you to turn the Sheet Set Manager into a batch plot utility.

When you right-click the sheet set title in the Sheets list of the Sheet Set Manager, you'll see the Publish option. Click Publish, and another set of options appears, offering several plotting and publishing options.

The following list gives a rundown of these options. More detailed descriptions of these options are offered in Chapters 6 and 21. See Appendix B for more on plot stamps.

Publish To DWF     Publishes your sheet set to a DWF file. This option uses the Publish command's current default settings for the Publish feature and the Sheet Set Publish Options. Before you use this option, make sure your settings are correct by using the Sheet Set Publish Options command in the Sheet Set shortcut menu.

Publish To Plotter     Sends your sheet set to a printer or plotter. This option uses the Publish current default settings for the Publish feature and the Sheet Set Publish Options. Before you use this option, make sure your settings are correct by using the Publish   Sheet Set Publish option in this shortcut menu.

Publish Using Page Setup Override     Enables you to override the default layout settings in your sheets with a named page setup. See "Storing a Page Setup" in Chapter 7 for more on page setups. This can help to unify the plotter settings for all the sheets in your sheet set.

Include Plot Stamp     Turns on the plot stamp feature in AutoCAD. When this option is turned on, a checkmark appears next to it in the shortcut menu. See Appendix B for more on plot stamps.

Plot Stamp Settings     Opens the Plot Stamp dialog box. You can then make setting changes to your plot stamps. See Appendix B for more on plot stamps.

Manage Page Setups     Lets you edit or create a page setup that you want to apply to your sheets as they are published. When you click this option, you see the Page Setup Manager dialog box, which is the same dialog box that you see when you right-click on a layout tab and select Page Setup Manager. See "Storing a Page Setup" in Chapter 7 for more on page setups.

Sheet Set Publish Options     Opens the Sheet Set Publish Options dialog box, which is essentially the same as the Publish Options dialog box described in Chapter 21. This dialog box lets you set the type of DWF file to create, the file location, and security options.

Publish Dialog Box     Opens the Publish dialog box and populates the Sheets To Publish list with the sheets in the sheet set. See Chapter 21 for more on the Publish dialog box.

Packaging Sheet Sets with eTransmit

In Chapter 21, you learned that you can use the eTransmit feature to package a set of AutoCAD files into a ZIP file in order to send the files to someone else who might need to edit them. eTransmit is similar to the sheet set Archive feature, but it also makes sure that all of the supporting files, including fonts, font maps, and plotter configuration files are included in the ZIP file.

When you select eTransmit from the Sheet Set shortcut menu, the list of files to include in the eTransmit file is automatically populated with the files from the current sheet set. This means that you don't have to "manually" build the list of drawings for the eTransmit file.

If you need to make setting changes for the eTransmit feature, you can do so by selecting the Transmittal Setup option in the Sheet Set shortcut menu.