Manually Linking Callouts and Drawing Titles

In this blog I am going to explain how to create and link Callouts to Drawing Titles in construction sheets that were not created using Dynamic Views. Majority of user projects fall in this category and it is important to know the value that callouts and drawing titles provide in such scenarios.

Why we need manual linking?

                Callouts placed using Detailing Symbols tools (Section Callout, Elevation Callout, etc.) contain text fields that evaluate based on links. They follow the link to its target and evaluate properties of interest, like drawing number and sheet name. The link is also used to navigate from the callout to the drawing title.

Using dynamic views workflow, user can place a callout and create the corresponding drawing and sheet directly using Create Dynamic View dialog. This workflow automatically creates a link on the callout. Before the advent of dynamic views, drawings were created on sheets in two ways. In such sheets, you can create callouts and drawing titles and manually link them.

1. attached saved views of the model
2. manually drew them with lines, arcs and cells

How to do manually linking?

Let us say you have two files:

Plan.dgn - which contains a plan sheet with an elevation callout in it

Elevation.dgn – which contains the elevation sheet with a drawing title

Drawing Titles are mandatory, because without them we cannot link existing sheets with callouts. If your sheets don’t contain drawing titles, you can create them in the following ways:

1. If your sheets contain references, right-click on the references and select “Create Drawing Title” tool.
2. If you manually drew the drawings on the sheet, use Tools > Detailing Symbols > Place Drawing Title tool.

To access external files you should have Project Explorer with current project directory. You can read more about project explorer on the Project Explorer - 101 blog.

Now open Plan.dgn. In Project Explorer, navigate to the drawing title in Elevation.dgn. Right click on the drawing title and select “Add Link to Element”. When asked to identify element to add link to, select the elevation callout. That is all. It adds a link to the drawing title on the callout.

Now the fields in the elevation callout display the elevation sheet’s information. You can right-click on the elevation callout navigate to sheet where saved view is placed, by following link on callout.