Advance Steel – Drawing Process Suite

When you create drawing of your projects it is likely that you always require the same set of drawings. You probably always use the same set of drawing processes to create these drawings. Even if you need to add or adjust a few later the first run of drawings likely is always the same. Would you like to do ALL your first run of drawings in one action? Well, you can. It is called a Drawing Process Suite

A full first run of drawings probably includes drawings for all your cameras to create the GA sheets. The camera drawing may be done by type to group related views onto sheets. This could be All foundation type views together using the Anchor Plan type or all joint details together using the Node camera type.  A full set of all parts and assemblies are also required. So, you need to use the different Camera type drawing processes followed by the parts and assembly processes. You will always use the same set of processes. This can be set up as a suite.

On the ribbon go to Output > Document Manager > Drawing Process Suite. As in the picture above you will see that there are already a couple of examples set up in the system for you. You can simply select the suite you want and click Use. The Everything suite as shown will run the 4 processes “Cameras – Anchors”, “Cameras – Overview”, “All Assemblies A3-A1 Single BOM” and “All Parts A4-A1 Singe BOM” in that order without you making another click. Cool!

If you want to set up your own suite to do other processes in any desired sequence it is simple to do under the User branch. Select User then click the Plus button at the top left.

Give your new suite a name and click Next. Using the four buttons above the table you can add as many processes to the suite as required and put them in the sequence desired. You can click on the process name to select a different drawing process from the drop-down menu. The sequence you run the processes in can sometimes be important. If you already have to run the Drawing Processes in a certain sequence manually, make sure you match it in your suite.

Those four processes in the Everything suite are all based on processing the entire model, so no selection is required. The suites work best with processes that do not require any selection. If you select process which requires a selection the row in the suite will have selection button available at the end of the line.

You will not be able to Use the suite until you have made a selection for each line requiring one. The blue arrow button lets you select the items to be processed by that particular drawing process. The red arrow clears your current selection.

A Drawing Process Suite is stored on your system not in any model file. Therefore, the suite you set up is available for all projects on your system. A few moments creating a process suite that suits your workflow can save you time and avoid potential errors by doing all the right processes in the correct sequence in one action.