How best to Publish Consultant PDF files

[Shortnort]

Any suggestions on the best method for including consulting engineers' pdf files into the architectural set? 

It would be nice to have a simple method so that the drawing index could be generated automatically and a complete set issued seamlessly...

Is it possible without spending hours importing pdf sheets and creating sheet layers?

[Jeff Prince]

Append your list of drawings with the consultant files listed as simple text.

combine your PDFs in your preferred editor.  That’s pretty fast.

 

Or do it the slow way in vectorworks.

[BartHays]

If you need something more "Dynamic"...

Insert the consultant's PDFs one page at a time, on a blank VW sheet layer. VW will keep track of which page of a multipage PDF you inserted on each sheet layer.

So, if you tweak a sheet, just update the original PDF in the Resource browser and it will update each sheet layer with the new PDF's contents.

 

You may even be able to add a hidden title block so your dynamic sheet list stays up to date. 

 

Bart

[Shortnort]

Thanks for the suggestions. 

Bart: Is it possible to explain the steps in creating multiple sheets as noted in your response?

 

Otherwise, it seems that there is no "simple" method of incorporating the pdfs.  Each of my projects has a minimum of 30 consultants' sheets - so adding importing and creating sheets is quite time consuming.

 

It would be great if I could Publish/Issue a full set of documents within VW.  I currently publish my Architectural sheets then combine other trades via PDF program into a Full Set.

[BartHays]

 @Shortnort The short answer is that it is more time consuming than you will probably like—but it does work.

 

To be honest, I don't use this for consultant sheet sets, I've used it for specifications. We created a shared Google Doc to collaborate with a client on Specs.

Each time there was an update or amendment we re-published the PDF and replace the PDF in a resources folder. Eventually it was 18 pages (11x17). 

The best part was that we could lay out the type using the Google doc and not have to fiddle with all of that text in VW.

 

But here is the process: 

 

For each sheet of your consultants set, create a new blank sheet in VW.

(side note: if you need a title block, you could hide it behind the PDF or put a large rectangle over the TB and fill it with Solid White??)

Go to the First blank sheet. Use File>Import> PDF.

 

Import just the first sheet of the pdf (1 to 1, of 29, in my example of above)

Then go to the next blank VW Sheet and do the same, but 2 to 2 of 29.

 

This is time consuming but as long as you have the "REFERENCE" box ticked you can update all of the sheets easily enough.

If the PDF changes (assuming the filename always stays the same) you will see it is "out of date" in the References window.

 

Right click the line to and pick "Update" and all of you sheets with this PDF will update. 

(note: if the updated PDF has more sheets you will have to add them using the process above.

 

maybe one of our fancy script writing people could figure out a a way to automate this tedious task??

(Prompt for sheet size, prompt for pdf file, get number of sheets in PDF, create VW Sheet, import page x of x, repeat)

 

Bart

[Shortnort]

Fantastic... Thank you so much.