Changes to Xrefs not retained

[brassworks]

Here's a weird one. It's probably a file-specific hair-across-its-arse problem or corruption, but maybe someone out there has some ideas.

As a default, our 'Options' dialog box, under 'Open & Save,' always has 'Retain changes to Xref layers' checked ON.

I created an AutoCAD file last week, turning off and freezing most of the layers in two xrefs, leaving on only a few layers as needed. I opened the file this morning to make a couple of edits to text, and the drawing opened not only with all the layers on for both xrefs, but with the colors as they show in the original drawings, regardless of the changes I'd made last week. I opened 'Options' to find that the 'Retain changes' box was not checked. I closed the drawing without saving, opened AutoCAD, and just opened 'Options.' The 'Retain changes' box WAS checked. I then opened the drawing in question, and the 'Retain changes' box was NOT checked.

I've rebooted a couple of times, closed down the whole operation once and begun again, made a copy of the drawing and renamed it, opened it in 'Land Enabled AutoCAD,' all to no avail. I've opened other drawings, but they show no problems and retain their changes. It's evidently just this individual drawing. It must be some sort of corruption. Any ideas about an easy fix?

[Hedgehog]

Just check that VISRETAIN is set to 1... it should be given what you've described but you never know. Could someone have been into the xref'd drawing & changed all the layer names? (& as always run an AUDIT & maybe even a recover on the suspect drawing).

[NBC]

The setting you refer to (VISRETAIN) is saved within each drawing file.
It is a variable that is not system specific.
My advice would be to see if you have a backup (.bak file) of the file in question and interrogate that to see if it has visretain set to 1

[brassworks]

I had not checked VISRETAIN, but I just did, and it is set to 1, as it should be. I can make the changes again to the drawing, to get it as it should look, make sure that the 'Retain changes' option in the 'Options' is set to ON, apply it, and close the drawing, but when I open it again, it goes back to showing everything and unchecking the 'Retain changes' option. This is a stubborn corruption.

I know that sometimes when you load a new lisp or macro, it can confuse the program, and it does this sort of thing, but I haven't done either one in some time.

If I need to get into that drawing again, I will WBLOCK the objects out of the drawing and open it as a whole new drawing.

[NBC]

then it sounds like you have some form of customisation going on on your system or indeed within that particular dwg file that is resetting visretain to 0 every time you open the file.

[rustysilo]

It is good to set these settings in your template file:

VISRETAIN = 1
INDEXCTL = 3
XLOADCTL = 2