Xref in drawing with several copies...is there a problem with this?

[KROB1234]

HI,

Thank you for taking the time to help answer my question. I am currently working as a CAD tech for an Interior Design firm…um yeah…does this explain it? Lol! Anyway, on their interior elevation drawings they actually copy and paste little floor plan cut outs from the xref. This is a huge problem for me, because every time they decide to change a sink or a faucet I have to go into the xref and find the floor plan clip in the interior elevation drawing. It’s just a pain and it leaves room for mistakes. I want to copy the xref ( that is already in the interior elevation drawing) and x-clip it. It just makes my job easier if I can fix it in one place and not have to filter through each drawing. So far it is working and I have actually received approval for this new method. However, I am a little concerned that there will be a file problem. The file size is currently 1,062 KB and is only going to get bigger, however I feel that x-clipping the plan over and over again is a cleaner way and less hatching is involved.

I used to work for an architectural firm that had their files set up in a user friendly and efficient manner. I’m just trying to make sense of the craziness at my new job.

Does anyone have any advice? Is this a good practice or is it a bad one?

P.S.

Currently I have 23 x-clippings in my drawing and I only have 1 xref in the x-ref manager…no I did not load the x-ref 23 times! Lol!

Thank you!

Kristin

[tzframpton]

It is not necessarily "wrong" to copy an XREF, however this is what Blocks are intended for. It can get a little confusing the more you copy/XCLIP.

 

Also, you do not affect filesize by copying XREF's around. If it does, it's very little I believe, because it's simply the same reference copied, it's not literally adding all the entities of the XREF file into the drawing at all. I'm not completely sure on this with continually copy/pasting an XREF, but I do know that adding multiple XREF's do not add huge filesizes at all, in fact it's minimal to almost none.