VIEWBASE with XREF that I'd like to clip

I have pipes and equipment in modelspace. Walls and structural columns are XREFed in from another DWG.

I want to create base + projected views in paperspace. However, the walls-and-columns drawing is 3 times the footprint of the stuff in THIS drawing: it would eat a lot of paper for no benefit. So I used XCLIP in modelspace to slice away the parts of the XREF I don't want. Then I used VIEWBASE over in paperspace.

The whole (unclipped) XREF was created in the view. I know I can remove XREFs from the view with VIEWEDIT but I want to be able to measure off some of the walls; it's just that the walls are longer than I need (for this specific drawing).

Does anyone have a silver-bullet solution to this?

Otherwise I might be (1) going to Viewports instead or (2) slicing my building drawings into pieces. I am not too enthusiastic about either of those.

I create the initial viewbase view with the building xref in it. I will trace the building parts I want in paperspace, and then unselect the building from the view. After that I add break lines and hatches to fit the viewbase view.

It's a bit cheap and doesn't work in all conditions, but it's the best way I've come up with to deal with oddly shaped items. You could also consider using an old fashioned viewport with legacy hidden display style.