Look It Up
Link the sheets
Finds the callouts that name another sheet (a detail marker like 4/A-301, or “see A-301”) and turns them into links you can follow, and that are saved in the exported PDF as real links.
Finds the callouts that name another sheet (a detail marker like 4/A-301, or “see A-301”) and turns them into links you can follow, and that are saved in the exported PDF as real links.
Why you would use it
Moving round a set by hand means reading a callout, finding the sheet and going there. A link does it in one click, and an exported file keeps the links for whoever opens it next, in any PDF reader.
For example
What to do
- Read the sheets' drawing numbers first (Read the title block…, or Scan drawing numbers).
- Choose Link the sheets… and look at what was found, sheet by sheet.
- Untick anything that isn’t a callout, and leave out a legend or a title block as an area.
- Choose Make the links. Click one with the Hand tool, or Ctrl+click with Select. Alt+Left goes back.
Going further
The sheet numbers come from the set, so a callout is text that names one of THEM, whatever its punctuation (A301, A-301, A 301). A number made only of digits is linked when the words round it say it’s a reference, because a bare number is also a dimension. A detail number written in front (4/A-301) or stacked above (a bubble) makes it a link to that detail when it can be found on the sheet; when it can’t, the link goes to the sheet and says so. References that look like your sheet numbers but aren’t in the set are listed, because they point nowhere. The links sit on a locked layer called Sheet links, and are written to an exported PDF as real /Link annotations, so Acrobat, Bluebeam, Foxit and a browser all follow them. A scanned sheet has no text to read, so it can have links made by hand but none found.