Xref certain layers?

[michael.lain]

Is there a method of Xref, or some other, of just certain layers of a dwg into your current dwg?

I am wanting to take several source drawings and have some common layers of all the source dwgs in one file under the same layers. Hope that makes a bit of sense.

[michael105936]

I think I know what you want to do.

If I understand correctly, you want to pull layers from several drawings into one common drawing.

Make sure your common drawing is open.

Using the design center 'CNTRL 2'
Once design center is open find the file that you want to pull from and expand it.
You should be able to see a sub-section called 'LAYERS'
Once you are inside that, it should show you a list of all the layers contained within that drawing.
Select the appropriate layers and right click drag them into your common drawing.
Choose add layers.
This also works with blocks, dimension styles, linetypes, layouts, tablestyles & x-refs

I am using Autocad 2007 and I find it a huge timesaver.


Is there a method of Xref, or some other, of just certain layers of a dwg into your current dwg?

I am wanting to take several source drawings and have some common layers of all the source dwgs in one file under the same layers. Hope that makes a bit of sense.

[irneb]

Welcome to AUGI & congrats on your 1st post. We may be understanding you a bit differently. As micheal's pointed out it's not too dificult to duplicate layers using DC.

However, as I understand, you wish to xref 2 or more DWG's into another. But you want their layers to be "combined" as if they're only one xref? Nope sorry :cry: no way to do that. You could go and bind the xrefs (using the Insert option) which will bring their layers into the current drawing by merging the layers and not creating new ones, but then the xref link is lost (the xrefs become blocks inside the current DWG). You can update the blocks manually after that by Insert & browse to the original DWG file of course, but that may create more work than it's worth :p

What I'd suggest to make your life a little easier is to look into using layer filters and / or layer states :mrgreen:

[jaberwok]

It might help to look in Help about INDEXCTL and "Partial load". It won't merge layers but it could restrict the amount of data that you have to work with - and make everything run a bit faster.

[cadtag]

Map3d will enable you to query in objects from multiple draiwngs based on their layer property (among other things) ., they will then be active elements in the current drawing, and can be edited, modified, saved back to the source drawing, etc.

[michael.lain]

Thanks guys, I will look into all these suggestions and see if any work best for what I m trying to do.

[irneb]

A work-around to this is to create a property filter in Layer Manager. Set the name column to ~*|*

This will then filter out any layer names with a vertical bar in their names (i.e. an xreffed layer). Then if you also turn on "Apply layer filter to layer toolbar" (under the Layer Settings dialog, Settings button on Layer Manager), then whichever currently displayed layer filter will be used in the layer toolbar drop-down.

This should actually be a default (note ADesk!) for the toolbar, as you cannot select a xref layer as current, and you cannot set something to an xref layer. So all those lines are simply wasted in that toolbar.

Another way of getting the same result, but without a custom properties filter: Select Xref in the tree to the left in LayMan. Then turn the "Invert filter" on (bottom left).