Paste worksheets and titleblocks on 40 plates in one move, or import Sheet Layers with TBs&Worksheets included?

[DianaK]

I would like to import 40+ Sheets from another drawing. I want to include the title block and work sheets. I know, I can't import the viewports, and wouldn't want to. I have been able to import the Sheets, but they come in empty. Is it possible to either import the Sheets with the worksheets and title blocks, or place the worksheets and titleblocks on 40 plates in one swift move instead of individually?

[TomWhiteLight]

hmmm, I was looking for a checkbox marked 'import layer objects' but alas it was not there. Hmmm thats a definite feature request.

 

For now I wonder how feasible it would be to work the other way round and import design layers into a file with those sheet layers.

[mjm]

@TomWhiteLight yes please, keep me posted on that research!

 

[DianaK]

49 minutes ago, TomWhiteLight said:

For now I wonder how feasible it would be to work the other way round and import design layers into a file with those sheet layers.

That ship has sailed.  The file is well under way already 😢

[TomWhiteLight]

@mjm

 

You can import layers with 'import layer objects' checked and it will bring in literally everything including resources.

 

You would then expect to have to create new viewports to present on the sheets but providing classes and layers are the same the imported geometry would populate the viewports. You might have to fiddle about with some visibilities.

 

[TomWhiteLight]

I will make the sheet layer import layer objects feature request.

 

 

[DianaK]

16 minutes ago, TomWhiteLight said:

I will make the sheet layer import layer objects feature request.

 

 

I did a little while ago

[DSmith2300]

Oh please make this happen.

To be able to import multiple standard pages including sheet layer textboxes and populated VPs would be a game-changer. 

[Benson Shaw]

Wasn’t there a workaround a few years ago?  Something like group the SLVPs (I guess one page at a time). Then copy/paste to Sheet Layer in target file. Not testing right now, but I think VP crops and annotations are captured, but not any DL geometry? Probably needs same class definitions in target file. If the DL geometry is also imported as Layer Import, it should populate the VPs. 
 

If that still works, then it could done several shhets at once by copying VPs from several or many sheets onto a single sheet in the source file. Stack them or offset by some consistent distance. Group all that and paste into the new drawing. Then redistribute the stack or offsets to a bunch of new sheets. 
 

Or was that process foiled in an update?

 

-B

[DJMDevon]

Is it possible to import a vectorworks file into vectorworks rather than just opening the file?
We are setting up 2 templates for pre and post planning in our system and want to be able to import a pre planning drawing into a post planning technical design file so we keep all the design layers and drawing sheets from the pre planning file but then also gain the extra built in setup of the technical design template file.

 

We also receive drawings from some of our consultants in vectorworks files so we could then do the same things as above. Currently we have to copy and paste in drawn information from the design layers of consultants drawings and paste in place to our own template so we can move the project forward using our base template. We have a key of general drawn information in the template so new staff joining the practice can easily select the predefined objects to start drawing to our companies own style.

 

I could export the VW file to dwg then import back in to VW but this seems a daft way of bringing a file into our template, while retaining all existing design layers and drawing sheets from the original file as the conversion to dwg and back again does change some objects.

[Pat Stanford]

Without digging into all the details of your specific templates, this sounds like something that you might be able to do with Layer Referencing.

 

Reference the Pre-Planning file into the Post-Planning file and you should get all the data on the drawing. If you don't want to keep the Reference Active, you can break the reference and just keep the data.

 

But I think this will only work for the Design Layers, not the Sheet Layers and Viewports.

[DJMDevon]

okay thanks. i'll give that a try