Viewports from References

[pcoleman]

I'm working on developing a standard set of details for our company, specifically rigging details for AV equipment. From a workflow perspective, I'd love to have a centralized library from which we could bring them in. I have no preference whether this is symbols in our central resource library or viewports from a referenced document. I would not like it to live in our template document itself, since this would be difficult to update as details get added and the dwg from which these details are being transferred (we're moving from AutoCAD to VW as a company) already has a half million lines.

The difficulty with creating symbols from this document and keeping them in the resource library is that we'd have to manually update the drawing title each time, and it would be great if it was automated (scale, drawing number). additionally, the text that would live with it would only be for the scale that it was created in, meaning we'd have to manually update the text when it gets scaled (In AutoCAD, the annotations lived in the model space and would thus automatically scale in viewports).

The difficulty with referenced files is the same as symbols in that it won't scale. It would scale if they were in the annotation layer, but then we have to create them every time, losing a lot of the time we'd be saving by the whole endeavor.

What feels like would be a win for us would be we could create the viewports in the referenced document and then bring those viewports in, including the annotation layers, which would then scale as needed. Is there a way to bring in viewports from referenced files? Or perhaps any method I haven't considered here?

[Jeff Prince]

The fastest, most reliable

method I have used places details on a design layer for each detail scale used.  I place all of the annotations in the design layer, something I only do for details.

 

This makes copying or referencing foolproof, copying notes between details fast and easy, and composing/editing sheets logical.