Greying out a drawing

[raley123]

Hi,

 

I am using a drawing from an architect of an office. It has multiple layers and blocks and multiple colours. I want to grey the whole drawing out as this will all be background drawing as i will be drawing freshly on top.

 

i have tried changing the colour of al the layers, as well as highlighting the lot and trying to change the colour. I have also ensure that the properties states colour by layer.

 

There are still quit a few things on the drawing that do not change colour - i think these are the blocks. There are about 30 different block drawings on the drawing itself. Is there a way to change these all in one go or is there a way just to highlight the whole drawing and grey it out?

 

Thanks!

[MSasu]

One solution will be to insert the drawing you want to appear faded as external reference (XREF command) into your current layer and adjust the XDWGFADECTL system variable to suit your needs.

Also, the items in locked layer appear faded, but I'm not sure if the intensity of that effect can be controlled.

[danellis]

If all the objects have to be live in your drawing you could lock the layers and use LAYLOCKFADECTL to fade them, but using them as an xref if by far the best way to go...

 

dJE

[eldon]

A heavy handed approach (but very satisfying and quick) is to make a copy of the drawing, then explode everything until there are no more blocks left, then make the colour of everything grey, before you x-ref it

[raley123]

thank you vey much for all of your replies - i will practice these later!

 

Thanks!

 

Rachel

[raley123]

I may sound a little stupid.... but I am currently copying the drawing to clipboard and then pasting in a new CAD workbook....

 

Can someone briefly run through the stages of x ref'ing this drawing in CAD? Sorry to be basic!

[MSasu]

Please check this tutorial on xref usage.

[ReMark]

First make sure the VISRETAIN setting is set to a value of "1".

 

Start by clicking on the View tab>Palettes panel>External References Palette button.

 

On the File References dialog box click on the Attach DWG button.

 

In the Select Reference File dialog window locate the file you wish to xref then click on the Open button.

 

In the Attach External Reference dialog box select whether you want the file attached or overlaid. The default Reference Type is Attached.

 

Change any parameters necessary then click the OK button. Now insert the file just as you would a block.

 

The xref is now attached.

[RobDraw]

Hi,

 

I am using a drawing from an architect of an office. It has multiple layers and blocks and multiple colours. I want to grey the whole drawing out as this will all be background drawing as i will be drawing freshly on top.

 

i have tried changing the colour of al the layers, as well as highlighting the lot and trying to change the colour. I have also ensure that the properties states colour by layer.

 

There are still quit a few things on the drawing that do not change colour - i think these are the blocks. There are about 30 different block drawings on the drawing itself. Is there a way to change these all in one go or is there a way just to highlight the whole drawing and grey it out?

 

Thanks!

 

SETBYLAYER can set those nested entities to "By Color".