Best practice for adding "Draft" stamp or watermark to preliminary issue

[tjmillar]

I'm required to add an overlay to a preliminary client review issue of my drawings, saying "Not for Construction". I can achieve the required result, as a beginner in regard to setting up my own template, I'm not at all confident about the best, most sensible and efficient way to do this. Do I manage it through drawing issues? Or as a duplicate layout book which links to a different master? Or as a layer in the layout book? Something else?
Thanks ...

[Eric Bobrow · Accepted solution]

You can place the stamp or watermark onto the Layout Masters so it shows up on each Layout sheet; if you wish, place it on a special layer that you make visible during this initial phase, and then turn off later when you want to have a clean printout without the stamp.

Note that layer settings in the Layout Book are independent of the Layer Combinations and View Settings in your model. This means that you can control this "watermark" layer for the layout book easily, since that layer will only turn on or off if you manually change it while looking at a layout.

Conversely - the layer settings for the Layout Book are "uniform" - meaning that you can't associate different layer combinations with different sheets. You can only turn on or off the layers for the entire book.

And finally...these do not affect your working views. When you're placing Views onto Layout Sheets, the Views carry their own Settings and use the Layer Combination you define in the View Map.

[tjmillar]

Thank you Eric! That does indeed sound like the most sensible approach. I read somewhere that relying on layers in masters was not a good idea - too much potential for making a mistake, or something - but for the purpose I outlined, with just that one unmistakable layer on or off, it does seem like the simplest and most sensible solution. Appreciate you taking the time to answer, thanks again!

[Barry Kelly]

You can always duplicate your maser layouts.
So for example you can have one for 'A1 Draft' and another for 'A1 Construction'.
Then just switch the master when you change from Draft to Construction.

Or just delete the "DRAFT" overlay on the master altogether as he job is unlikely to go back to Draft?

Barry.

[tjmillar]

Thanks Barry,
There's more than one way to skin a cat, as my grandmother used to say ...
Probably I'm overthinking it and it just doesn't matter that much, but my question is about what's the best way to achieve the outcome. I'm new to setting up my own projects - I've always relied on my employer's templates and masters - even though I have several years of working with Archicad, I don't have much experience in some of these basic principles.
Following (I think) Eric's advice, I now have a layer combination called "NFC stamp off" which I can apply to the masters relevant to the layout book. That seems quick and simple and reasonably foolproof - but I'm still concerned there may be pitfalls I haven't anticipated. Still, I think it may be better than than using a second master? Deleting the stamp between issues makes sense, but I'm setting up a template here, and I will need to go though this process with each new job - sooner or later I will delete the stamp before I should have.
Anyway, thanks again again for your answer!

[Anonymous]

The way I deal with this is I have Autotext on the master layout that refers to the status of layout, this way I can have some layouts issued as draft/ for tender / for construction etc

Scott

[Erwin Edel]

As Scott, we just use our layout status autotext in our title block / stamp.

You could also add your watermark to your PDF afterwards with something like Acrobat, keeping your layout 'clean'.

I can't really recommend the layer method. It is very easy to accidentally have it on or off.

I'd go for an autotext string that I could clear at the very least as a way of hiding it rather than relying on the layer.