Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Repath an Xref

Have you ever opened a drawing and found that an Xref failed to load because it was moved or renamed on the network? You dutifully pick up the phone and ask the Project CAD Coordinator what's going on, and they tell you that the original background was not named according to standards, and that they've "fixed" the issue. So you detach the missing Xref that has the old name, then re-attach the correctly named background. Now you have to reset all the Xref Layer properties again: Freeze/Thaw state, Color, etc.

Try this instead: repath the existing Xref attachment (or overlay) to the new name. Open the Xref dialog, select the missing Xref, and Browse to its new name/location. This way you preserve all your previous modifications to the reference's layers.

AutoCAD 2006 and previous (or using the CLASSICXREF command in AutoCAD 2007):

AutoCAD 2007:

Now your Xref name may not match the name of the file you browsed to, but you can easily fix that with the RENAME command, or by hitting F2 when the Xref is selected in the Xref dialog. This same methodology works for repathing/renaming Images too.
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1:31 PM

    First real experience with the dialog was in an attempt to strip the path of a file from pre 2007.

    Pre 2007 there was a button that said "Save Path".

    Now you have to know to hit enter once you have made your edits.


    The good thing though is in trying to debug this issue I came across options for saving a path relative.

    ..\
    and
    ..\(path name)
    are now my most favorite, yet not apparent additions to the Xref world.

    ..\
    is a meant to attach relative, but have acad search a folder down for the file.
    ..\(path name)
    allows you to attach relative down and then back up folder(s).

    cool stuff.

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