Sheet Set Chaos at Issue Time
A 40-sheet issue set is due at 5 p.m. The sheets are organised in a Sheet List, but the drawing index on sheet A000 was typed manually and no longer matches the sheet numbers after three sheets were renumbered. Two plan views were duplicated with Detailing and now show inconsistent annotations. A section marker on sheet A101 points to a detail that was deleted, so the callout is dead. The titleblock revision schedule shows Revision 3, but two sheets were never issued at Revision 2 and should read Revision 1. The printer queue is slow and the lead wants PDFs now.
1. How would you bring the drawing index and revision data under control before printing, and in what order?
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Do the data fixes before any PDF is generated, because a PDF is a snapshot of whatever is wrong.
Order of operations:
- Rebuild the drawing index as a schedule, not typed text. A Sheet List schedule reads sheet numbers and names live, so renumbering can never desynchronise it again. Place it on A000 and delete the manual text.
- Fix revisions per sheet. Open each sheet's properties and set the Sheet Issue Date and Current Revision correctly. Sheets that were never issued at Revision 2 should have Revision 1 as current. Use the revision schedule on the titleblock, which reads the sheet's revision data; do not type revision numbers into the titleblock.
- Verify the revision cloud and tag on each changed sheet matches the revision assigned.
- Only then regenerate the index and check the sheet count (40) against the list.
Printing first would bake the errors into the issue set and force a full reprint, which the slow queue makes expensive.
2. What is your approach to the duplicated views and the dead callout, and why does order matter here?
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Both are annotation-integrity problems, and both should be resolved before the index is finalised because they can change what is on a sheet.
Duplicated views: Duplicate with Detailing copies annotations, so edits made in one copy do not propagate to the other. Decide which copy is authoritative, then either delete the redundant copy and re-place the good view, or re-duplicate with Duplicate (no detailing) and re-annotate once. Never leave two annotated copies of the same plan on different sheets - reviewers will find the discrepancy.
Dead callout: A section marker pointing to a deleted detail is a broken reference. Either recreate the detail and re-point the callout, or delete the callout and confirm the section is no longer referenced elsewhere. Check the section's Referencing Sheet and Referenced View parameters to see where it was used.
Order matters because deleting a view can remove it from a sheet and change the sheet's content, and re-creating a detail can add a new sheet reference. Finalise views and references first, then rebuild the index, then set revisions, then print.