Layouts to individual drawings

[Mamu]

I have 95 layouts in one drawing and need to export / write out each layout to become individual drawings? Is there a command for this or perhaps a lisp or script....thanks.

[Dadgad]

Use Wblock and they will be saved as new drawings. When you insert them later you probably want to check EXPLODE. Tedious at best, but a lot easier than redrawing them. No doubt there is a Lisp solution, but somebody else will have to help you there. As you have posted this in Autocad General, the Lisp Posse may not pick up on it. I've certainly been wrong before, hope I am this time. That's certainly a hell of a lot of layouts for one drawing!

[bigcarpchaser]

Can't think of a quick way of doing this, so my longhand version would be doing lots of "saveas" (thereby creating more dwg files) and deleting the unwanted layouts as you go. Quite why anyone would want more than a dozen or so layouts on one drawing is a mystery to me. Must be quicker to work on more files with less tabs and utilise xrefs where possible....maybe?

Creating 95 new drawings (don't forget not to erase your original, just in case!) shouldn't take too long if you have a reasonable PC, however, unless the first drawing is set up correctly in the first place, the new drawings created will be a ****** to edit, so think ahead first.

[Tiger]

Take a look at this thread: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?66206-More-layouts-into-one-file - there are a few suggestions there that might help you, even though the original question is the opposite.

[bigcarpchaser]

Tiger ...liking the "exportlayout" command, always amazes me how many commands there are to "forget" if you don't use them on a regular basis The OP will still end up with 95 drawings all maybe containing the same thing, say the building outline for example. If future edits dictate the building changes then there's 95 drawings to amend, not one xref, so whatever way the chap ends up achieving his ultimate goal, the original file MAY require some thought or have I go the complete wrong end of the stick?

[ReMark]

When you use the EXPORTLAYOUT command you are basically taking what you see in your layout and creating a model space drawing which AutoCAD will default to saving with the original drawing name followed by the layout number. Example: MyDrawing.dwg is saved as MyDrawing_Layout1.dwg. So if you have 95 layouts the numbers will range from 1 to 95. There are some caveats (see Changes to Exported Objects) to using this command which should be considered before proceeding. You'll find these listed in your Help file under the topic Export a Layout to Model Space.

[Tiger]

Yep, like Bigcarpchaser, I am in doubt that it is a good idea to split up the drawing into 95 drawings without knowing why the OP wants to do it -perhaps the collective hive mind that is CadTutor can figure out a better solution if we get some more background?

 

That said, I only remember that thread because I looked through it like an hour earlier - EXPORTLAYOUT have never entered my life before either

[ReMark]

I just tested the command for the first time myself on a fabrication drawing on recently finished. Got the three layouts to export out as three different drawing files.

[SLW210]

I have used it quite often. I even used the Autodesk Labs preview for AutoCAD 2008. We did quite a lot of work for companies that only wanted Model Space drawings.