I am looking for a way to create a master list of construction notes then use blocks attributes with fields to link to that master list. That way if the master list changed the note bubbles would change as well.
Sheet sets are being used with this project but I can't think of a way to make it work with the existing sheet set technology.
I would appreciate any ideas that anyone has to offer.
My thought would be to do this the other way around. Create the master list of notes, each note of which is an attribute. Then where you want to show that note attribute value, create a text object with a field that links to the blocks attribute value. See attached drawing. (Rel 12)
Lisa,
Thanks. I should have posted that we had already looked at that option but it's pretty time consuming to create the object field links every time you add a new one, plus it would only work on the current file, with no way to work within an entire project. I'm thinking that outside of programming code, this is basically a new feature reqest.
I submitted a feature request to Autodesk that they add a tab to the Sheet Set Manager for Construction Notes or Key Notes or whatever they want to call it. You construct a list of notes, then you can right click on them from that tab to add a reference to the note on the drawing. Then if you update the list the references update.
I'd love to see this feature added to basic AutoCAD, which would of course push it up through the verticals.
Thanks for your response!
KaDe
Yes, it's quite a bit of work on the sheet set and the notes. But once you do the notes, you can copy paste them to all drawings. And it achieves the stated goal: if you change a note, you can change it in one place and all drawings will update.
Mark Green
Working on Civil 3D in Canada
The way I have handled this is to create a master file of Notes, and then make a View of each note.
Now I can just drag-n-drop each note onto any sheet. They are automatically xref'd, so if/when changes happen, they are updated to the sheets.
This has the added benefit of allowing me to place, on other sheets, Callouts that point to these notes. If a note's page number or view number changes, the callouts will change throughout the sheet set.
Map can link drawing objects to spreadsheets and database tables. I've contemplating using it just as you are wanting to do but I've never gotten around to putting it together.
What you could do is create your callout blocks with an attribute that corresponds to the database table. Then generate links between the block attributes and the database table. From there you can display the fields from the database table in your drawings. I'm not current on Map's linked tables capabilities since 2004 so I don't know if you can make a linked table that is displayed in a drawing dynamicly update when the database table or the block attribute changes. If I can get some time I'll go through it. In the meanwhile someone might be able to offer more insight on that approach.
Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful suggestions!
We'll be trying a few of these options to see what works best!
Best regards,
KaDe King
Thanks for the recommendation of the "Construction Notes Manager", it looks promising. Currently we have a set of master Word doc's that we open and copy/paste any note to a multi-leader. Somewhat tedious, however, it does help standardize all our notes, which can be edited outside of AutoCAD.
Keith Biggs
Chair, CAD Standards Committee & Senior CAD Technician
R.F. Binnie & Associates Ltd.
Leading in Quality: OQM certified March 2013.
Lots of great ideas.
I'm a SSM hound and like that approach but if the master list gets lenghty it could be difficult to navigate.
here another opton: Excel link to a table then you could link a table cell to any note, block attribute etc. the table has the added benifit of overriding a note cell for a given sheet, or amending without effecting the entire set if need be. Or for that matter, amend and write back to excel for the whole set to see the effect.
@Joe-Bouza wrote:
....doesn't that bring in an occurance of the xref for every callout block dragged in? .....
No, if the model views are in the same drawing, that drawing only get xref'd one time.
Tim
I case anyone comes across this thread, I've added this to the IdeaStation so we can have this capability built-in to C3D.
The more kudos it gets, the better chance of it happening.
I have been asked this same Construction Notes update question a few times and have not been able to come up with a solution. Have there been improvements in the software since this thread has been started (in 2012) that will help in dynamically updating notes?
If you were to consider third party add-ons, DotSoft's ToolPac contains a KeyNote system that automates the process by letting you edit your master list, select an item and quickly place a block with attribute (or mtext, leader), then scan the drawing for those key annotations and build a table object of the keys with their descriptions.