Xref insertion points and scale factors????

[justinpickens]

Hello all this is my first post. So I took a cad class but they really didn't prepare me to deal with Xrefs and I could sure use some tips and/or tricks. I work for a Land Surveying company and I extract points for layout, the engineering company sends me their cad files and then I have to try and figure out their xref tree. I wish they would send my one drawing with all their linework but in never happens. Anyway the project i'm working on now is realy giving me headaches. Is there anyway to tell what the insertion point of the xref should be relative to the parent drawing or can I restore the xref tree created by the engineers? I would just copy and past the drawings together as i have in the past but in this case there isn't enough common elements in the drawings to be sure it all lines up right. I can see them in the xref manager but i can't change the paths for them and then I try to attach them but then it promts for the insertion point and its a **** shoot, 0,0,0 worked for one of the files. I'm not sure what to try next so a push in the right direction would be a huge help. Thanks and Happy Holidays

[jaberwok]

Hi, welcome to AUGI.
You can pick an xref and type LI (=List) and the insertion point will be given though working through a tree of xrefs will soon get to be a pain.

[archie.manza]

Basic rule of inserting xref's to me is placing my UCS to WCS then as you said should be 0,0,0. INSUNITS should be the same with the Drawing that you will be inserting the xref to and the Xref.

[Comach]

Can you not just BIND the xrefs to the parent DWG instead of copy and paste?

[irneb]

I can see them in the xref manager but i can't change the paths for them and then I try to attach them but then it promts for the insertion point and its a **** shoot, 0,0,0 worked for one of the files. I'm not sure what to try next so a push in the right direction would be a huge help. Thanks and Happy Holidays

In the XRef Manager palette there's 2 button (top-right of the list): List View / Tree View. You can see the XRef tree under Tree View. That is you can see which XRefs are nested through another.

You can only change paths of Xrefs inside the DWG it's been directly attached to. So the process should be: (1) Change the path of each root xref. (2) open each of those. (3) repeat for each steps (1) & (2). (4) reload all in the orriginal DWG.

You could still end up with a problem if one of the XRefs come in twice (once as root & once nested).

Otherwise hughrjt's suggestion could possibly also work, as binding converts the XRef to normal blocks (which you can then explode). However you still need the pathing correct. You then don't need to know where thay've been inserted, how manny times & what rotation / scaling / mirroring / etc. needs to be applied.

BTW, it seems that the Eng is sending you individual DWG files? Now if you save these all into the same folder, the pathing may work correctly. You can then add this folder to the project support paths. It will then ensure that it searched through this folder if the XRef's not found.

You may also ask the ENG to rather send you an eTransmit which will repath the XRefs relative to each other then place all into one ZIP file. If you then extract all the files out of that ZIP (keeping the folder structure) the pathing should still work. This should make both your and their life a bit simpler.