xref help please

Stephen Deering

Hi Guys. i have no experience with x refs but have been given a drawing with some of them involved. I am unable to edit them (of coarse) how can I gain control, or should I say make an xref not an x ref?

Cheers

Jason Bourhill

Stephen,

If you're familiar with working with Blocks, then it's not much of a stretch to work with XREFs. Main difference of course is that the block definition is held in an external file to the current drawing. Generally its this additional file management that puts people off.

You can use _REFEDIT to edit the inserted xref in place, just like a block, except changes are saved backed to the external file. You can use the _XREF command to jump straight to the external reference section of the drawing explorer. From there you can select all the xrefs in the drawing and then by right clicking you can choose to Bind or Insert the xrefs, which converts them to blocks.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Stephen Deering

Thanks Jason but thats easy for you to say:)

Thing is this drawing I am working on is weird, cant turn anything into a block, even one I just made. I pastclip something newly created and it ends up about 2 kms out from where I meant to past it. I do not really understand what you said but tried it anyway nothing. All I want to do is cut and paste from this drawing into a template of my own so it may start behaving, but the X REF portion will not paste. So what is the easest way just get the xref to paste.

I am by no means a guru in CAD but have been using it daily for about 5 years with no real issues. This drawing has a history of the developers falling out with the Architects on bad terms. Something that is going through my mind is has this been done on purpose out of malice (just a thought but I have never had so many issues with editing a drawing)

I would like to send this drawing to some guru type to try and do some basic stuff just to see if it is the drawing or me. I do not want to attach the drawing would get in strife putting it out in general public. Can anyone please assist

Cheers

Robt Deans

Assume your problematic Xref is loaded in your drawing, and you can see it in your Drawing Explorer?
If so, select it, choose "Insert", then you can Explode.

John Gaunt

I have a very similarly misbehaving file from an Acad user - weird cut & paste, certain lisps don't work...

Have not had to do anything with its xref/s - if you need to edit those and the good suggestions here sound a bit hard, perhaps you can open and edit it separately once you know where it is and its name.

The main file will pick up the revised definition on 'reloading' the xref or after closing and re-opening.

A lot depends on whether you want to preserve the xref, work on it, explode or insert it into the main file as a plain block.

Re-creating the file, if everything else comes across except the xref, maybe the most surefooted way to is to draw a circle at its current insertion then cut/paste that into the new, and Attach the xref at its centre.

In place editing xrefs is strange (refedit). Dunno if it has always been (I don't usually do it), but I just tried in V13 (to see if you can) and didn't save the file before closing.

The xref was unchanged, but its representation in the edited but not saved file had changed.

Anthony Apostolaros

Stephen, I've often seen the problems you described, and from non-malicious sources.
They were caused by some weird setting that someone else thought was a good idea.
I used to know how to fix a file that pasted far away from where I clicked, but I can't remember it right now. I'll try to think of it.
In the meantime, have you tried using CopyWithBasePoint instead of CopyClip? I think that solves the immediate problem.
I think your idea of pasting everything into a new file is the best solution. That definitely will get rid of all haunted house effects.
As for the unpasteable xref, don't include it in the copy and paste. Instead, open the externally referenced file and copy and paste from that.

Jason Bourhill

Stephen,

copy and pasting issue sounds like the units aren't correctly set in your source or target drawing. In both drawings open up _SETTINGS and check your INSUNITS. This should be set to the units you are using in your drawing. When you Insert a block from file, attach and Xref, or copy and paste from one drawing to another, BricsCAD will look at the value for INSUNITS and apply the applicable scale factor.

If you are utilising this xref across multiple drawings, then its probably worth the pain of get more familiar with xrefs. Inserting all, or parts of the xref into your own drawing is likely to cause you more grief later own, particular if you expect to make further changes.

One big advantage of xrefs, particularly drawing data that has come from elsewhere, is that the settings (text styles, dimstyles, layers, block definitions...) defined in the xref drawing won't have any effect on the drawing you have xref'd it into. Its akin to practicing safe sex

Note Express Tools has a nested entity copy tool, which is useful for copying objects from blocks. Another alternative is to use the _BOUNDARY command to trace around objects in the xref to create a polyline.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

John Gaunt

If it's like the file I have, I can ^C any entity and ^V it right nearby in the next step and same file... where the hell has it gone? Oh, somewhere miles away.

I don't really wanna know, hope I have seen the last of that job.