Shifted Origin -- Dimensions revert back to pre-shifted origin

[actsrevolt]

I have some process/manufacturing facility drawings which are nested XREFs (attached).
I have a weird glitch where my drawing xref insertion point shifts without my knowledge.

Weirder --and more important-- is that when I move the xref back (and fix 0,0,0 and INSBASE settings) all dimensions end up stretching over a few lengths greater than the entire compound itself --- back to refer to the XREF's general location before it gets moved.

I move the XREF to align with the working drawing, and the drawing dimensions stretch BACKWARD to some point within the original XREF area. I move an XREF a quarter mile up (north) and to the RIGHT, and the dimensions in the active, editable drawing jump down and LEFT. Checking the dimension shift distances: on a sample of two horizontal dimensions, one 48" and the other 65" --the X-distances are 15028" and 13572" respectively-- 1456" difference. The 65" distance is over 2000" to the left of the 65" dimension, anyway. This arithmetic is beyond me.

The XREF is the base drawing, and has been finished and static for some while --I don't modify it unless there is a major project underway & I am paranoid about it, too.
Anyway, I turn all the layers on in the base drawing, thaw & unlock them, and I try the stretch command as well as the move command, but one origin point of all daughter drawing dimensions (over a hundred -- I can only guess) go and get happy feet.

What tidy logical explanation is there for this? Autodesk doesn't issue patches for LT, right? I wish I could get some help with this.

[Opie]

Do you lock the layer the xref is assigned?

[actsrevolt]

Anyway, I turn all the layers on in the base drawing, thaw & unlock them <-- all layers/all drawings.

[Opie]

I'm referring to your drawing which contains a reference to your base drawing. Is the layer the base drawing is referenced into locked? This should prevent your base drawing from moving around in your working/sheet drawing.

[actsrevolt]

The objective is to move the XREF to coincide with the daughter drawing entities, which includes a large number of dimensions, many of them referencing to the entities in the XREF.

This works --EXCEPT that all of the dimensions in the daughter drawing have one origin point that stretches back to the old XREF region in the drawing. This is a mess!

Soooo, opened the drawings up in a copy of full-AutoCAD 2010 last night. It took nearly a week to get to this --it sure aint my JOB! Opened it as easy as you please. NP. Saved it as 2007 and brought it to work today. Now LT reads it fine. I saved and closed. Now, I open the drawing I was stitching back together from pre-move pieces... Presto!
To my thinking, this is more of a mess than ever. I don't understand how this can be, other than: intrinsic hardware; intrinsic hardware; virus.

My hardware is ample for LT: Dell Latitude D620, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M card. My 1 GB memory is adequate for the typically 2MB - 5MB files I deal with.

Software: AutoCAD LT07 -- this is an unsupported port-over of the Autodesk flagship product. I run Windows XP SP2.

I run Symantec suite, although virusses may have been found in the past, and the registry may still reflect this, although I never have any speed or power issues that are not in relation to the size of data sets (files) I load.

Very strange that this problem fixes itself when handed a saved file from Autodesks' latest & greatest, but no editing changes are made.

[irneb]

We've run into similar situations with dimensions just deciding on their own to move into outer space. The only solution I could find at the time wasa to turn DIMASSOC=1 instead of 2 and redo those dims.

It's not ideal, and I'd actually like to resolve this problem myself. DIMASSOC=2 dims are just too good a feature to waste.

Edit: thinking of it again, this only happened in the last 2 years. And then only on AC2007. I haven't heard or seen this with our newer 2008/9's. So maybe it was a 7 bug. I'll have to check around if someone's using the dimassoc=2 versions, and if so do they still get the wandering dims problem on xrefs.

[ccowgill]

Edit: thinking of it again, this only happened in the last 2 years. And then only on AC2007. I haven't heard or seen this with our newer 2008/9's. So maybe it was a 7 bug. I'll have to check around if someone's using the dimassoc=2 versions, and if so do they still get the wandering dims problem on xrefs.
that is what I found to be the case as well, in the later versions it doenst seem to be an issue. Unless you are using multileaders and resize a viewport, I have had leaders shift positions then.

[irneb]

Unless you are using multileaders and resize a viewport, I have had leaders shift positions then.That could be due to Annotative Scaling.

[actsrevolt]

Thank you all very much for the heads up on 2007. There were some vital new features in that release-- the company is a real toe-jammer on software & claims I was lucky to get the UG in 07. Now I have ammo for getting to the latest. This problem has cost the company a chunk. They know better, I'll have to let them know they are acting childish again.