Xrefs shifting on their own in target drawing

[Phil Gravel]

We've been having issues with xref dwgs that are inserted. For some reason, some of them have the very annoying habit of shifting by a couple of inches every so often. We can't seem to reproduce the conditions that make them move around. We are hard set about the procedures on how to insert xrefs, as this has been happening for some time now and I've tried minimizing potential causes.

The conditions are as follow:
1) Inserted furniture in a layout plan - position is critical as some architectural elements have to coincide.
2) We always insert our xrefs on a defined layer (that we lock after as to prevent accidental movement)
3) Insertion point 0,0,0 and then xclip / move the xref to where it belongs.
4) We always attach dwgs as overlay with a relative path.
5) We make sure that UCS are the same in source and target drawings.

We don't "accidentally" move whole drawings arounds, it occurs sometimes when a user opens the layout that another user previously saved.

You can probably appreciate the annoyance here.

Thanks for any insight

Philippe Gravel

[Iceberg]

3) Insertion point 0,0,0 and then xclip / move the xref to where it belongs.

Is there a reason you move the xref once you clip it?

Generally I would say that you dont want to move your xref once you reference it, into your drawing. Place your CAD entities in the drawing where you want them to be, this way when you xref them in, they will overlay in the spot that you need without the need to move it.

[Opie]

Is REFEDIT being used on any of these XREFs? A non-world UCS may modify your xref data when saving out of refedit.

[tedg]

Given your description of your process, I don't see why your xrefs would be moving.

But you may want to describe why you do what you do, Iceberg is right, I would make more sense to have your cad work where it belongs in the first place and simply drop it in at 0,0 in the WCS and lock the layer.

Is it because you have a master drawing (xref) of all your furnature; where you drop it in, clip it and move it?
What if you broke out your furnature into separate drawing files where your insertion point(s) were 0,0, and then place them (xref) on the plan where you need them as a block with an insertion point, and lock the xref layer?

Just a thought

[Phil Gravel]

I would make more sense to have your cad work where it belongs in the first place and simply drop it in at 0,0 in the WCS and lock the layer.
This makes some sense, I'll try this on our next project. The problem I foresee with this is when the client decides (and you you know he will!) to move the furniture around, then we'll have a whole new bucket of worms.



Is it because you have a master drawing (xref) of all your furnature; where you drop it in, clip it and move it?
What if you broke out your furnature into separate drawing files where your insertion point(s) were 0,0, and then place them (xref) on the plan where you need them as a block with an insertion point, and lock the xref layer?
This is what we do right now, except that we don't insert them as blocks. We normally have 10 to 20 different pieces of furniture with their own drawings that are inserted in a reference "master" drawing with the architectural location (lease lines , walls , columns and such). I will also give it a try on the inserted blocks

And to answer Opie, we do use REFEDIT, but all of our drawings are always saved on world UCS (vlisp reactor), so that shouldn't be an issue.

To be continued...

[Opie]

After discovering the refedit issue, I chose to not use refedit anymore. I don't like having to fix something that wasn't originally broken.

[cadtag]

After discovering the refedit issue, I chose to not use refedit anymore. I don't like having to fix something that wasn't originally broken.

++ Refedit was broken on shipping, and I've never heard that it's been reliably fixed. XOpen is an alternative that seems to be trustworthy.

[tedg]

After discovering the refedit issue, I chose to not use refedit anymore. I don't like having to fix something that wasn't originally broken.


++ Refedit was broken on shipping, and I've never heard that it's been reliably fixed. XOpen is an alternative that seems to be trustworthy.

+1 here!
I use XOPEN all the time (alias "XO" in my PGP).

I do, however, use refedit on blocks now and then to make some quick edits, doesn't seem to cause an issue with them.

[Phil Gravel]

I haven't managed to resolve my issue yet. I've tried making a block out of the referenced items and separate blocks of separate items - nothing works. The shifting seems to have slowed down but I still find items moving. Last thing I can think of (although it shouldn't do anything) is that I have other people using AutoCAD LT opening the drawings as references. Could that be part of the problem?

Next project, I'll try drawing the items where they actually go in the layout. My issue with this is that if the client wishes to move the items around, then I will waste tremendous amounts of time fixing my paperspace.

It's agravating to waste so much time on such a detail. If all else fails, I'll stop using xrefs entirely and develop a workaround for blocks to autoupdate.

[tedg]

I haven't managed to resolve my issue yet. I've tried making a block out of the referenced items and separate blocks of separate items - nothing works. The shifting seems to have slowed down but I still find items moving. Last thing I can think of (although it shouldn't do anything) is that I have other people using AutoCAD LT opening the drawings as references. Could that be part of the problem?

Next project, I'll try drawing the items where they actually go in the layout. My issue with this is that if the client wishes to move the items around, then I will waste tremendous amounts of time fixing my paperspace.

It's agravating to waste so much time on such a detail. If all else fails, I'll stop using xrefs entirely and develop a workaround for blocks to autoupdate.

I don't know anything about LT, but another thought came to mind..
Is anyone "EXPORTING to AutoCAD"?
That has been known to cause issues with insertion points.
But I believe the issues were if the UCS wasn't at World when it was done.

Just another thought.

[Phil Gravel]

Is anyone "EXPORTING to AutoCAD"?
That has been known to cause issues with insertion points.

Nope. But thanks for all the thinking. I'll try and look deeper into what could be causing this issue - if I figure it out, I'll make sure to post it here for others who may have the same condition....

Thanks again

[Julesagain]

Is someone or something (obscure LISP) opening the reference, and changing the base point? (BASE command) That will cause it to jump around the next time it is opened.

[Phil Gravel]

Is someone or something (obscure LISP) opening the reference, and changing the base point? (BASE command) That will cause it to jump around the next time it is opened.

Nothing comes to mind, but I'll look into LISPs used. I've managed to narrow down the shifting dwgs to 4 drafters (out of 17) and I am logging their LISP usage daily so I should be able to figure this out eventually. Thanks for the pointer

[Phil Gravel]

Ha! Thanks Julesagain! - I did have an obscure LISP that messed around with the base point of the drawings. Fixed the routine and all is well.