Using X-Refs as Title Blocks

[jasmin.dooley]

So I am a member of the CAD group in my company, and as such am one of the people responsible for coming up with solutions to a lot of annoying CAD problems within our pracitce. 

A frequent request we get from our colleagues is; "can we have the title blocks as x-refs so that we can just update all the addresses and job numbers and stage text on one drawing, so that it changes on all the drawings?". And I aggree with them, and what I want to know is if there is a way of doing this. Because a job that I get asked to do most frequently is - can you change all the drawings in the job from saying "tender" to "contract"? Which - if it is a big job - takes ages because you have to individually open each drawing in CAD and then type out the new word. Whereas if it was a title block it would only need to be done once, and the rest of the drawings would be updated automatically. 

Please could someone let me know or help me in figuring out how to do this please. 

Thank you. 🙂 

[hwalker]

Welcome to the Forums

You can use X-refs as title blocks (Work doesn't do it, and I've never tried it) BUT the problem you would have then is your drawing references would all be the same.

eg. You have a first floor plan and a ground floor plan. Titles for each are first floor plan and ground floor plan.

However if your title block xref has a title in it called third floor plan. Your titles for the first floor plan and ground floor plan will change.

The way my company does it.

Is to do all the drawing work in modelspace, and have the title blocks on layouts in paperspace.

And we have as many layouts as there are drawings.

Also having all the drawings in one, makes it easier to PUBLISH them.

[dgorsman]

Sheet sets and field should be investigated, although they require drawings to be in paper space to function.  When you have multiple paper space layouts, the attributes can read fields from the other blocks so thats another potential time saver.

One of the key aspects with individual block inserts is the ability to capture details for each drawing using data extraction or other methods.  When parts or the entire title block is XREFd that ability is lost.  Don't forget that different drawings may have different signatures (yeah, it happens) as well as different titles, so they really do need to be different.

[steven-g]

I keep the main graphical details of the title block in model space, ( which could just as easily be an xref per project) and this title block has attributes for things like project number, address, client the stuff that remains constant for this particular project. Each sheet has a viewport in the lower right corner that shows the title block, the drawing boundaries are size related and as such are in the layout, and again in the layout is an attributed block for sheet specific info such as drawing title, scale, drawing number, and this is positioned over the title block viewport. So changes made globally to the project are only made in one place in model space.

[dbroad]

Using xrefs is ideal.  The trick is to use xrefs for the information and graphics that is common to the whole set.  Use blocks and/or fields for sheet specific information.  I have a block that has sheet specific information that has the same insertion point as the job general part of the titleblock.  I xattach the general part and insert the sheet specific part.  Works great.

When using sheet sets, set up a template with a layout that already has the dual block/xref or sheet specific fields and xref already laid out.  Creating a new sheet set will automatically xattach the general part of the titleblock.