question on XREF

[ali888]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me here. First of all, I use Autocad LT 2005. I'm afraid I have two questions to ask here. They both are related to XREF

1. Is there a shortcut command that i could type in to reload ALL the xref drawings in a drawing? By that i mean it usually asks to enter the name of xref drawing when type in -xref in the command line.

2. is it possible to xref only a part of a drawing onto another new drawing?

Thank you in advance

[Cad64]

1. Are you trying to Reload or Repath? If you are just trying to Reload, open the Xref Manager, select all xrefs and hit Reload. LT doesn't have the REDIR command, so if you need to Repath several xrefs, I think you will have to do one at a time.

2. You can't xref a part of a drawing. It's all or nothing. Unfortunately, LT doesn't have the XCLIP command which would allow you to clip the portion of the xref you don't want to see.

[StykFacE]

2. You can't xref a part of a drawing. It's all or nothing. Unfortunately, LT doesn't have the XCLIP command which would allow you to clip the portion of the xref you don't want to see.

AWESOME!!!! just learned something today.... 95% of my work involves XREF's and i never new about the XCLIP command... sheeeeesh, for big architectual drawings i xref in, and only need to draw plans for a small section, boy does that come in handy. sweet Cad64, thanks a million....

(usually i make another XREF that's edited/trimmed down; XCLIP takes away that whole step for me now.... 8))

[Groutie]

Hey Styk,
Yup XCLIP's a nice little tool. It's fair to say in old fashioned times when machines were slower and memory wasn't aplenty I used to do what you did i.e. make my own trimmed down XREF's, because even with the XREF clipped, the whole file size is still embedded into the drawing. I used to have say 4-5 big floor plan XREF files on my drawing and it really slowed the machine down unless I fiddled about and reduced the size. As I say, not so relevant these days, but sometimes I suppose when the XREF files are very big, the old fashioned way of busting out all the crap on the donor file before insertion is the way to go still. Oh, just a thought, XCLIP works on blocks as well, not a lot of people know that......

[ali888]

Hi,

I wonder if it is possible to do the following. Say, i have a main-base drawing. Then, i go creating another drawing called TerminalA.dwg. It's actually an xref of the main-base drawing. By the way, i normally use the overlay option to do the xref. After having done this, i create another drawing again that's an xref of the terminalA drawing. Can this be done?

Thank you in advance

[StykFacE]

Hi,

I wonder if it is possible to do the following. Say, i have a main-base drawing. Then, i go creating another drawing called TerminalA.dwg. It's actually an xref of the main-base drawing. By the way, i normally use the overlay option to do the xref. After having done this, i create another drawing again that's an xref of the terminalA drawing. Can this be done?

Thank you in advance
yes you can keep Xref'ing a file over and over. it's called embedding Xref's.

at work, we have usually 5 or 6 files Xref'ed into each other, like this:

1: Gridlines (Structural Beams and Column Lines)
2: Architectual floor plans
3: A/C and Heating plan
4: rooftop framing and joist
5: A/C and Heating roofplan and unit locations
6: Mechanical Sheets and Title Blocks (only for printing purposes, and putting all files into one loaction.)

from 1 to 6, all files are Xref'ed in. that way when a revision comes around, once you fix one, it updates in all, so upkeep on the whole set is minimal.

[Groutie]

Yeah Styk, That's the way it's supposed to work. But by the time the drawings have been round to a few subcontractors who've bound the xref's and bloated the files just to add their bit of cheap nasty spiral wound tin, the files comes back in a helluva mess and actually extracting their input for inclusion onto the master drawings can be a pain in the butt. I hate people who don't draw with nice layer discipline and people who, when given all necessary seperate files, feel duty bound to bind them all together,,,,,,grrrr

[StykFacE]

Yeah Styk, That's the way it's supposed to work. But by the time the drawings have been round to a few subcontractors who've bound the xref's and bloated the files just to add their bit of cheap nasty spiral wound tin, the files comes back in a helluva mess and actually extracting their input for inclusion onto the master drawings can be a pain in the butt. I hate people who don't draw with nice layer discipline and people who, when given all necessary seperate files, feel duty bound to bind them all together,,,,,,grrrr
haha, yeah i hear ya... i rarely have that problem because at my company, we're at the end of one road, so nothing comes back to me, it's always us sending prints out. thank the Lord for that, too.... i would hate for someone to screw up my files, i have a good system and it works well. :)

[Groutie]

Amen bruvver

[ali888]

Thanks guys for your sharing information with me.

But i don't know how to do that with Autocad 2005 LT. I mean i have tried it but it didn't work. I could see nothing on the drawing.

For example, i have drawing1.dwg which is an xref of the based-drawing.dwg. I then created another drawing2 that is an xref of drawing1.dwg. I saw nothing on the drawing2.dwg. i have tried to do both zoom-all and zoom-extend but still no drawing was seen. That's my first problem.

My second issue is if it's possible to xref only a part of a whole drawing with autoCAD 2005 LT?

Thank you in advance

[asptamer]

Yeah Styk, That's the way it's supposed to work. But by the time the drawings have been round to a few subcontractors who've bound the xref's and bloated the files just to add their bit of cheap nasty spiral wound tin, the files comes back in a helluva mess and actually extracting their input for inclusion onto the master drawings can be a pain in the butt. I hate people who don't draw with nice layer discipline and people who, when given all necessary seperate files, feel duty bound to bind them all together,,,,,,grrrr

HAHAHA good one!
I'm in position of one of those "subcontractors," and just for the hell of it, I'd like to put a word in our defense.

It's good when the architect has 6 xrefs interbound and labeled, but what do you think a subcontractor can do when he gets a set of 100 (or more) files whose filenames are not descriptive in the least, and half of those reference each other? And all the subcontractor needs to work with is a floorplan with some furniture in it perhaps... but 90% of what he's getting will only slow down his own work because it'll sit there in computer memory.

The solution is: To bind and edit the bound drawing to reflect only required details, and put all new additions onto a (set of) new layer(s) with a clear reference point to background. If your subcontractor doesnt do that last step - then yea, he should burn in CAD hell, but otherwise, lets not hate consultants for returning you a drawing in a form entirely different from the one you send them : )~

[StykFacE]

Thanks guys for your sharing information with me.

But i don't know how to do that with Autocad 2005 LT. I mean i have tried it but it didn't work. I could see nothing on the drawing.

For example, i have drawing1.dwg which is an xref of the based-drawing.dwg. I then created another drawing2 that is an xref of drawing1.dwg. I saw nothing on the drawing2.dwg. i have tried to do both zoom-all and zoom-extend but still no drawing was seen. That's my first problem.

My second issue is if it's possible to xref only a part of a whole drawing with autoCAD 2005 LT?

Thank you in advance
well check a few things 1st.....

1. the Xref file, make sure it's as close to 0,0 on the X,Y axis. sometimes drawings and objects are positioned so damn far out in AutoCAD space, than when you do a zoom all/extents it's too small to see anything.

2. make sure it's not on a freezed layer, or a layer that's turned off.

3. no you can't Xref a part of a drawing. in the full version you have a command called XCLIP that you can use to set a viewable boundry, but no luck for you i'm afraid.

8)