Are there any good third party plugins or scripts to automatically move and scale XY references based on titleblock border?

[Anonymous]

I'm converting a drawing set from ladder references to X:Y grid references. Some of the drawings in the set are pretty information dense, and some of them are pretty sparse.

For those sheets which are relatively dense, we would prefer to sacrifice a little readability by making the content smaller relative to the title block, than to split the pages up since we are replicating an existing set of prints for which the customer could not find any dwg files.

As I see it, to use X:Y referencing, I can either:

A) Scale the contents of each drawing to fit within a title block of fixed sized (from drawing to drawing) so that I can set my X-Y grid origin and spacing to be the same on every sheet.

B) Scale the title blocks on each sheet to fit the contents. This requires origin and spacing parameters to be set on a drawing by drawing basis.

Option A is undesirable for our work flow because we copy a lot of components and circuits from sheet to sheet, and the time it will take other engineers to figure out how much I scaled any given component in this package will add up over time.

Option B will require more time up front, but will avoid scaling compatibility issues down the line.

Is there a third option I'm not aware of? Perhaps there is a script that will allow a user to select a title block's legend and set the drawing's X-Y grid reference settings base on the legend's location and scale?

Thanks!

[Icemanau]

I'm not aware of any third party solutions to doing this.

Personally, when I have done similar in the past, it's been a matter of inserting a standard size title block at 0,0 and then moving the schematic into position.

Yes, it does make setting up the X,Y grid easier, but it did mean extra work in having to split up overlarge schematic across several dwgs. This was also complicated by spreading out the some of the rats nest of lines at times.

It was even worse when nothing was 'on grid' and all the symbols were manually drawn and not blocks.

Regards Brad

[jseefdrumr]

Here's an idea.

Use paperspace to set up a title block and an XY grid. Make sure there's a viewport. Get everything in position relative to the title block. Save.

Next, import the layout from that drawing to every other drawing. Then, within each drawing, position the schematic into the viewport so it's sitting in the title block properly.

And now for the magical part. Use the command CHANGESPACE to send the XY grid out of paper space, into model space. This command will automatically scale things so they appear exactly the same. Except, now your grid is in model space and scaled correctly. You'll need to renumber your grid using the Revise Ladder command for each drawing, though.

When you do this, you can also transition the title block into model space at the same time as the grid. Or, if you plot from paper space, you don't have to do anything. Your title block is in paper and all design elements are in model.

While this workflow is a lot of steps, and it still forces you to go at things on a drawing-by-drawing basis, it largely addresses your worry about scaling components. It also streamlines the insertion of the XY grids so they are consistent, positionally, regarding the title block. And, if you're plotting from model space, it sort of keeps you from needing to calculate a scale factor for each title block.