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Coinciding with the acquisition of VIA Development, Nate joined Autodesk in March of 2003 after a decade stint as an entrepreneur following a two-decade stint as a controls engineer and software applications developer at Owens-Corning. Nate is now the lead product architect for AutoCAD Electrical. He loves this stuff.
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Updating drawing set parameters from the Project's "scratch database" - AutoCAD Electrical
September 11, 2007, 05:30 PM Nate HoltThis specific issue has come up a couple times lately, most recently about three hours ago: the user has a large AutoCAD Electrical project set. He needs each drawing's "SHEET" number assignment to be adjusted. The adjustment is not something that the existing AutoCAD Electrical sheet number re-sequence can do... the customer really needs to go in and manually edit each drawing's sheet number value.
The solution does not seem attractive... click on each drawing listed in the AutoCAD Electrical project manager window, select "Properties", type in the new sheet number assignment, save, and then repeat over and over.
Better Way
But there is another way to do this. The SHEET number attribute value assignment (along with a few other drawing-specific settings) are automatically extracted into the project's "scratch database" file. This file is in Microsoft Access format.
So, how about editing this database file and then somehow pushing all the new SHEET assignments back to the project drawing set?
Not a problem. Here's how (note: you need a copy of Microsoft Access to do this):
Step 1. Make your project "active" in the AutoCAD Electrical project manager window, highlight it, and then note the project database name in the lower part of the window.
Step 2. Made a renamed copy of the scratch database file. Maybe just put an underscore in front of it. In this example, we're using the demo "iecdemo" project, so I've made a renamed "_iecdemo.mdb" copy of the database file.
Step 3. Open the copied file in Microsoft Access. Go to the FILETIME table.
Step 4. Edit your project drawing's sheet numbers as displayed in the SH column. Save the edited file.
Step 5. Back in AutoCAD Electrical select the "Update from Scratch Database" command (on the schematic report toolbar flyout or on the "Projects" pull-down menu as shown here.
Step 6. Browse to the edited COPY of the scratch database file. Select the "FILETIME" toggle and hit OK.
Step 7. Now select project-wide update on the next dialog by selecting all the drawings for processing and hit OK.
That should do it.
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