Managing a zillion tabs
I am working on a commercial construction project, and it is looking like I will soon end up with a zillion layout tabs. I hadn't been aware that I was personally going to do as many parts of the project, but my role in this has continued to grow.
If I had known this when I started, I probably would have made the basic drawing an XRef that other drawings refer to. Though, I have always been leary of this, knowing that I might make a change to the Xref and not anticipate all the issues it may make on other drawings. E.g., all the dimenions that I applied no longer being correct and I have to find them.
If I stay with my current drawing, and continue to add layout tabs, then they will become unmanagable. Perhaps there is a strategy I hadn't thought of or a 3-rd party application that wil help with this.
Any recommendations?
Joe Dunfee
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I guess you could still wblock it and bring it back as an xref, to make the layouts file faster I assume.
The only solution I have thought of is to make rectangles around each area with a big say M1, M2 etc on layer defpoints, to remind me which tab would apply to where I am.
Not very sophisticated. Actually the rectangles are blocks with a bump representing the title block.
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In my case, it is not primarily the size of the structure, so that I would need to show small areas. Rather, it is the number of layers, and resulting number of tabs to show the various layers separately.
Just this moring, I went the X-ref route. I Wblocked the appropriate layers, and inserted it as an Xref. However, after several hours of work, I suddenly realized that all the layer settings in the view ports of the original drawing were totally forgotten. This is because the Xref now has a unique set of names, and I know of no way to make the layer names be the same as when the Xref objects were in the drawing originally.
There is another major problem. When looking at the layer pull-down menu, all the x-ref layer names are prefixed so that they much too long to show the full name. Also, the layer dialog box does not show the xref layers for some reason. So, I have no way to actually see the name of the layer I want to turn on or off.
It has been a long time since I used Xrefs, so it is possible I am missing something, and there is a way to make it work.
Thanks for the reply.
Joe Dunfee
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You should be able to insert (from the xref tab in explorer) and explode the xref to bring it all back to how it was.
Xref layer names should show up properly in explorer, though that's a bit more cumbersome than the Entity Properties toolbar.
There is a setting right up the top under View in Explorer to make them show or not.
My layer names are planned so they can be manipulated in groups. I use scripts to freeze and thaw the groups using wildcards (like -la;f;dw*;;), those are added to a custom pulldown.
A second set of similar scripts use Vplayer in just the same way in vports. The scripts work just as well on xref layers, if there are no hiccups in the naming. Not sure if layer states can do that?
They have to all be thawed in model space to be sure they show in pspace, perhaps there is a setting for that.
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Thanks again John Gaunt. I ddin't know about the X-ref toggle to show in the layer explorer.
I have a very similar naming system. I.e. all dimension layers have DIM in them, so that a macro button I have to turn off all dimension layers. I also have a standard where I will name a series of views View1, View2, etc. so that a set of buttons will switch between them. I tried to do the same with layer states, but there is no way to do that with macros or scripts.
However, for this project it is complicated by the fact that I am working with a set of drawings from someone in South America, and he apparently got caught with the x-ref, then attach, filenaming issue. So, the layers have been quite a chore to manage already. So, as soon as I was reminded of the Xref issue with layers, I quickly abandoned that idea.
I ended up working by making the former Xref drawing just a regular block. Then, when I need to update it, I reinsert the block. This avoids the layering issues I was running into. I am sure there is a LISP routine out there to automate this process and make it almost work like an Xref.
Joe Dunfee
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I lose a lot of time on imported files, reducing and transfering layer names into my conventions.
Being architectural backgrounds I use for mech services, there's no need for the often myriad layers.
Some just hurl them in as is, but they often don't satisfy standards if it's a govt job and I can't stand the clutter.
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