Link the sheets, so a click on a callout goes there

On a set of drawings, a floor plan calls out a detail on another sheet, and the detail sheet says where it came from. Following those by hand means reading the callout, finding the sheet, and finding your way back. Link the sheets finds the callouts and makes them links, so a click goes there and Alt+Left brings you back.

Before you start

The links go to sheets by their drawing numbers, so the set needs to know them. Use Read the title block… or Scan drawing numbers first. A page whose number can’t be read can have links from it, but none to it, and the window says which.

Make the links

1. Choose Link the sheets… (find it with Ctrl+F, or from the prompt that appears after you save drawing numbers).
2. It reads each sheet's text and lists the callouts sheet by sheet: what the callout says, which sheet it names, and whether it goes to the sheet or to a detail on it. Sheets with no text of their own can be read from a picture (see below).
3. Look at them. Untick any that aren’t callouts, untick a whole sheet, or use Leave out an area… round a legend, a key or a title block.
4. Read the notes under the list. References that look like your sheet numbers but aren’t in the set are listed: they point nowhere.
5. Choose Make the links.

Use them

• With the Hand tool (H), click a link to go to it. With Select, hold Ctrl and click, so a plain click can still pick the link up.
• Alt+Left goes Back to where I was.
• The links are dashed boxes on a locked layer called Sheet links. Hide the layer to see the drawing clean; unlock it to move or delete one.
• Run it again after a revision: the links made this way are replaced, never doubled. Remove the links made this way clears them.

Keeping them in the PDF

When you export the marked-up PDF, every link is written as a real PDF link. Anyone who opens the file in Acrobat, Bluebeam, Foxit, a browser or a phone can click a callout and land on the sheet it names, with nothing from DatoMark needed. A link to a page that isn’t in that export is left out, and the export says how many.

A link by hand, and showing and hiding them

For what the search can’t find (a scanned sheet, or a callout that’s a symbol with no words), choose Add a link by hand…, drag a box round the callout, and say which sheet it goes to. A link made by hand is yours: running Link the sheets again never replaces it. Show or hide the sheet links (in the commands) hides the dashed boxes to see the drawing clean; they still work in an exported PDF.

A report of the links

Save a report (CSV) in the window, or Links report… from the commands, writes a spreadsheet in three parts: what links to what (and whether each landed on its detail or only the sheet); where each sheet or detail is referenced from, which is what lets you check everything that points at a detail before you revise it; and the references that point at a sheet that isn’t in the set.

Links a PDF already has

Revit and CAD exports often carry links between their sheets, and a file exported from here does. Use the links already in this PDF brings them in, so they can be followed here, seen on the Sheet links layer, kept in the project and written out again. Links to web addresses or other files are left alone, and a link already here isn’t brought in twice.

How it decides what’s a callout

A callout is text that names one of the sheet numbers in your set, whatever its punctuation: A301, A-301 and A 301 are one number. A detail number in front (4/A-301) or stacked above the sheet number in a bubble makes it a link to that detail, when the detail's title can be found on the target sheet. A number made only of digits is linked when the words round it say it’s a reference (“see”, “drawing”, “detail”), or when it is written as a detail, because a bare 1100 is also a dimension.

Scans, and sheets with no text of their own

A scanned sheet has no text to search, and neither does a sheet whose lettering was drawn as lines (some CAD fonts). The window says how many sheets are like that, and offers Read them from the picture. It draws each sheet at reading size, reads the words on this computer (nothing is uploaded), and finds the callouts in them the same way it does for any other sheet. It also reads the title block of a sheet that gave no drawing number, so that sheet can be linked to.

• It takes seconds a sheet (more for a very large one), shows how far it has got, and can be stopped at any time.
• Anything found that way is marked from the picture, because reading a picture can slip. An O read for a 0 is put right only where that gives a sheet number that’s in the set, and the window says so.
• A callout is only kept if it names a sheet that exists in the set, so most of what a misread produces is simply not a link.
• Nothing is linked until you have ticked it, as with every other sheet.

In DatoMark Link the sheets