Setting to ignore Xref paths?

[jan1550190165]

Is there a setting to tell Autocad not to search the network and other people's hard drives for xrefs, images and PDF underlays when it opens a DWG file? Ideally, I'd like it to ignore all saved paths and look for all externally referenced files in the same folder as the main DWG file.

I work at home, with a slow connection to the company server, and I have to use lots of DWG files created by other people. Those files always have dozens of external references left over from previous projects, all saved with absolute paths to the server or to someone else's hard drive. So it takes a long time to open each file the first time.

And once the file is open it takes me a long time to get rid of those obsolete references, because there are always a few references to files that ARE part of the current drawing and I don't want to detach those. I want to change those to relative paths. But Autocad doesn't differentiate between the valid ones and the obsolete ones. It finds them all at the saved locations, even though there are copies of the valid ones in the same local folder as the main DWG file.

[rkmcswain]

Does this help?

[jan1550190165]

Thanks, R.K. I didn't know about that Partial Open option. It does speed things up. I don't understand why it does, since it only seems to apply to externally referenced drawing files. Most of the external references in the files I have to open are to image files and pdf files.

But it does seem to allow me to open a drawing file more quickly so I can detach all the "unreferenced" externally referenced image and pdf files. Is there a command that detaches all of those at once?

In many cases, the previous user not only didn't detach the obsolete xref, but also didn't delete the insertion of it in the main file. Therefore, many of the obsolete external references are not listed as "unreferenced." That's why I was hoping the Saved Path for all external references could be automatically replaced by dot-backslash. All the valid externally referenced files are usually in the same folder as the main dwg file.

Is there any way to replace all the Saved Paths with dot-backslash once the file is open? Maybe a lisp function that does that for all Saved Paths at once? I would only want it to do that for the Saved Paths for externally referenced drawing, image, and pdf files. I wouldn't want it to change my Support File Search Path list.

[yasir.aman]

Is there any way to replace all the Saved Paths with dot-backslash once the file is open?

You may want to see . I think post#2 is the solution you want. Hope it helps.
Good Luck

[BlackBox]

I must have a setting that isn't configured correctly; when I choose partial open from the open dialog, no subsequent partial dialog is shown, and the drawing opens like normal (all XREFs loaded).

- - - Updated - - -

You may want to see this thread. I think post#2 is the solution you want. Hope it helps.
Good Luck

Reference Manager is often overlooked to batch process XREF path changes.

However, in order to rename the XREF(s) as well, I just use Tim's utility to batch process the renaming, and/or repathing of XREFs:

http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?to...4146#msg554146



Cheers


[Edit] - I see with the latest forum updates URLs are no longer being parsed automagically. Grrr URL tags added.

[jan1550190165]

Thanks, yasir.aman and BlackBox. I tried the things you suggested, and each one helped to some extent.

I found that REDIR cleared the saved paths of some externally-referenced DWG and image files, but it didn't seem to work on PDF or DWF underlays. The files I'm trying to clean up usually have a lot of PDF underlays, xrefs and images, and a few DWF underlays.

I found that Reference Manager had the potential to clear the saved paths of all types of externally-referenced files, but it usually crashed when I clicked on "Apply Changes." After it crashed, I generally found that it did apply some of the changes.

Also, neither of those solutions seemed to change the paths of files that were listed in the Xref Manager as "Unreferenced." The files I'm trying to open usually have dozens of those "Unreferenced" files listed in the Xref Manager, some of which can't be detached for some reason.

Is there any way to detach all those "Unreferenced" files at once? It takes a lot of time to detach them one by one, which I need to do to make the Xref Manager manageable. I would have thought that the PURGE command would get rid of them, but it doesn't.