Drawing sheets and borders

A sheet is a page that puts a border round another page of the drawing, ready to print: the trimmed sheet, its frame, zones, a title block filled in from the drawing (its title, number, revision, material, scale, sheet n of m …), and in its viewport the page you choose, fitted or at a scale such as 1:2. The sheet is live: change the drawing (its sizes, its notes, the page shown) and the sheet follows at once.

A border is an ordinary, parametric .piq drawing: its sheet size, margins, zones and title block are drawn from its variables, so one border serves several sheet sizes. Its labelled variables are its inputs (the sheet size, the orientation, the company, who drew, checked and approved it), set for each sheet.

Making a sheet

Edit › Page › New Sheet…

1. Choose a border. The list holds the borders in the Borders folder of the Extensions folders (yours, then the app's); Another file… chooses any border drawing. The preview shows the border on its own, its fields as placeholders such as <Title>.
2. Embed in drawing (ticked unless you clear it) keeps the border inside the drawing. Cleared, the drawing keeps only the border file's path and reads it whenever it is opened, so a change to a shared company border reaches every drawing that links to it (see Linked files and web addresses).
3. Choose the page to show, its scale and its position in the viewport:
   • Fit to the viewport: as large as fits, less a small margin (a twentieth of the viewport's smaller side).
   • Largest standard scale that fits (the default): 1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 1:10 … for millimetre drawings (ISO 5455), 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8 … for inch drawings, and the enlargements 2:1, 5:1 …
   • A scale from the list: the page is drawn at that scale, and whatever doesn't fit is cut at the viewport's edge.
   • Position: centred, or in a corner or against a side of the viewport (within the margin).
4. Set the border's inputs and choose Make Sheet.

The sheet is made on a new page (Sheet 1, Sheet 2 …), and the border is drawn on the drawing's Sheet layer (made if the drawing hasn't one: black on paper, never plotted as a cut). It is one step to undo.

To change a sheet, select it: the Properties panel shows its border and the pages it shows, their scale and position as written (text such as "1:2", or an expression of the drawing's variables), and Sheet Settings…. Edit › Page › Edit Sheet… opens the same settings for the selected sheet, or for the page's only sheet. Anything else can be drawn on a sheet's page too: notes, a logo, a dimension.

Printing and exporting

Exported to PDF, SVG, EPS, Illustrator or as a picture, a sheet's page is the sheet: the page is the border's size (an A3 sheet is an A3 page, edge to edge) with the border and the page shown in its viewport. Export several pages to one PDF to print a set of sheets. DXF and the other CAD formats write the sheet's lines and text as they are.

The fields

A border's texts show the drawing they are placed in through field functions in their expressions: DRAWINGTITLE(), HOSTNOTE("Drawing number"), HOSTCLASS("category"), SHEETSCALE(), SHEETNO() and SHEETCOUNT(), TODAY(), HOST("L") and more (see Sheet fields). Edited on its own, a border shows its own values, or a placeholder in angle brackets (<Customer>) where it hasn't the thing; on a sheet, it shows the drawing's, and nothing where the drawing hasn't it.

Most title block fields come from the drawing's notes (File › Drawing Properties): give the drawing the notes Title, Drawing number, Revision, Date, Material (and Finish) and the borders that come with the app fill them in. Without a Title note, the title is the drawing's file name; without a Drawing number, the file name; without a Date, today's date.

Edit › Page › Insert Field… picks a field from a list (sheet n of m, the scale, the drawing's title, a note, a classification field, a variable …), with text before it if you like (Scale ), and chooses the Text Tool with its expression: click where it goes. Use it on a sheet's page, or in a border you are making.

The borders that come with the app

In the Borders folder of the app's Extensions folder:

Their inputs: Sheet size, Orientation (ISO), Company, Drawn by, Checked by, Approved by, Grid reference zones (on or off), and for ASME the General tolerances. They follow the general layout of the standards; check them against your own drawing office's rules, or copy one and make it yours.

Making your own border

Open a border (or start a new drawing) and draw it as any parametric drawing, in millimetres or inches:

1. Give it variables for its size: a sheet size as a SELECT choice with the width and height going with each size, an orientation, margins. Label the ones the user sets (COMPANY="","Company"): they are the border's inputs. Draw everything on points worked out from them, so the border follows its size.
2. Draw the trimmed sheet's edge (a rectangle round everything: the border's extent is the sheet, and the page a sheet prints on), the frame, the title block's lines and its labels.
3. Draw the view area with the Viewport Tool: a rectangle where the page shown goes. A border can have several viewports (a main view and a detail), each with a name; a sheet then says which page each shows. The viewport's rectangle isn't drawn on a sheet: draw a frame round it yourself if you want one.
4. Add the fields with Edit › Page › Insert Field… (the Text Tool with an expression), or type them.
5. Put lines on a layer named Sheet to draw them on the drawing's Sheet layer; layers the drawing hasn't are drawn on the sheet's own layer. Line widths (LINEWIDTH) are kept: 0.7 for the frame, 0.35 and 0.25 for the title block, say.
6. A logo: place a vector image (from an SVG, PDF or DXF file) in the border; a raster image is shown on the screen. QR codes and barcodes (BARCODE) can hold fields too: BARCODE P30,P31,P32,P33,QR,HOSTNOTE("Drawing number"). Parts from the library (PART) can be placed in it as in any drawing.

Save it in the Borders folder of your Extensions folder (File › Extensions › Open Extensions Folder) to see it in New Sheet's list; folders in it show as Company › A3. A company border kept on a shared drive and linked (Embed in drawing cleared) is read again whenever a drawing using it is opened.

In the drawing file

A sheet is a SHEET element, its border a PARTDEF of the library (kept in the drawing, or linked), and a border's viewports VIEWPORT elements:

PARTDEF "ISO 5457 A-series","…the border's drawing…","Borders/ISO 5457 A-series.piq"
PAGE "Sheet 1"
SHEET @1,P0,"ISO 5457 A-series",90,VIEW="Page 1",SCALE="AUTO",SIZE="A2",COMPANY="Example Co"

See also: Pages, SHEET, VIEWPORT, Sheet fields, Viewport Tool.