Found a quick trick for aligning piping on large drawings

I was working on a 20-page set of piping details last week and kept messing up the alignment between sheets. Tried snapping to grids and even eyeballing it for an hour, nothing lined up right. Then I remembered an old timer once told me to use a crosshair block on a separate layer and copy it to every sheet. Set it up in five minutes and everything snapped perfect after that. Has anyone else got a go-to block or layer trick for keeping multi-sheet sets consistent?

3 comments

3 Comments

irisw731mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, did a buddy of mine tell you that trick? He swears by that crosshair block method. He was so fed up with misaligned sheets on a hospital job that he taped a piece of paper with a cross on his monitor as a backup.

the_nina1mo ago

Ha, @andrew916 I've been there with the "use a common basepoint and pray" method myself. It's basically my default approach to everything, which is why I've got a 50/50 track record on it. Your comment about "simple old timer fixes" got me laughing because I still use a sticky note on my monitor as a backup crosshair sometimes, just like that buddy of yours. I've also started adding a tiny red dot block at the same coordinates on every sheet, that way if the alignment is off by even a hair I can spot it right away.

andrew9161mo ago

Man, I feel your pain on this one. I spent a whole afternoon once chasing a misalignment on a 15 sheet set of ductwork details and wanted to toss my laptop out the window. Your crosshair block trick is genius though, I'm definitely stealing that for next time. I usually just use a common basepoint on every sheet and pray, but that never works as good as having a visual guide. It's always the simple old timer fixes that save the day.