View where a drawing is being referenced into

[Jeversole]

I wish there was a way to view WHERE a drawing is being referenced out to. Much in the same way the X-reference manager allows your to see what drawings are referenced into that drawing it would be nice to see where a specific drawing is refeenced to.

Example : I have X-referenced drawing X-base Into multiple files But it has been replaced by mistake referenced it into another file I dont wish it to be ( now this is a very basic example I have other more elaborate needs like for file managment and for other drafters to easily assess a set of drawings) but I have over 100 Drawings and dont wish to search them all. So I go to the X-base drawing, open it and pull of the " X-Ref Outsource Viewer" and get a list of all the drawings X-Base is referenced into, Find the arrant drawing, go in and detach X-base From that drawing. Issue solved without wasted minute hunting through multiple files and checking the X-reference manager.

I feel , as do many people within the firm where I work, that it would be an excellent addtion to the autocad program.

[Steve_Bennett]

I totally see why you would want such an animal as I would also. The closest thing I can offer in the mean time is the Reference Manager.

I am going to move this to the AutoCAD wish list forum since xrefs really deal with the base AutoCAD platform, not ADT.

[rkmcswain]

You can already do this.

See: http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com/2006/01/need-to-find-drawing-or-drawing.html

[Steve_Bennett]

You can already do this.

See: http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com/2006/01/need-to-find-drawing-or-drawing.htmlSo... Using the search box in the drawing you currently have open and active you can see which drawings that it is referenced into? I'm not seeing how to do that - must have been a long day...

[rkmcswain]

Did you follow the link over to Ellen's website? Step-by-step instructions are there.

You don't have to have a particular drawing "open" in the editor, I just ran it while in a new empty drawing.

[Ed Jobe]

I wish there was a way to view WHERE a drawing is being referenced out to. Much in the same way the X-reference manager allows your to see what drawings are referenced into that drawing it would be nice to see where a specific drawing is refeenced to.
While the tip suggested will work, it needs to be performed everytime you need it. Thus it can be time consuming. For it to be readily available, you need a document management system to store the information and automatically update it. While the drawing is closed, it cannot be aware of what has happened to other files. For example, you can store a path to an xref'ed dwg inside the current file, but once the file is closed, you can delete/move/rename the xrefed file, breaking the path you just stored. A DMS monitors this activity and stores it for future refrence and warns or prevents you from making such mistakes. Thus the relationships are always current and viewable.

If you are a subscription customer, Vault (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4502718) is free. For our company's needs we chose Adept from Synergis (http://www.synergis-adept.com/). This comes with a relationship browser that show both parents and children of any file, both in a tree view and a table view with path info, etc.

If I thought this would be possible to implement in just AutoCAD alone, I would have suggested making this a wishlist item instead of a poll.

[Steve_Bennett]

Did you follow the link over to Ellen's website? Step-by-step instructions are there.

You don't have to have a particular drawing "open" in the editor, I just ran it while in a new empty drawing.No, I didn't follow the link. I didn't know I was supposed to. I will go look at her website.

[Steve_Bennett]

While the tip suggested will work, it needs to be performed everytime you need it. Thus it can be time consuming. For it to be readily available, you need a document management system to store the information and automatically update it. While the drawing is closed, it cannot be aware of what has happened to other files. For example, you can store a path to an xref'ed dwg inside the current file, but once the file is closed, you can delete/move/rename the xrefed file, breaking the path you just stored. A DMS monitors this activity and stores it for future refrence and warns or prevents you from making such mistakes. Thus the relationships are always current and viewable.

If you are a subscription customer, Vault (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4502718) is free. For our company's needs we chose Adept from Synergis (http://www.synergis-adept.com/). This comes with a relationship browser that show both parents and children of any file, both in a tree view and a table view with path info, etc.

If I thought this would be possible to implement in just AutoCAD alone, I would have suggested making this a wishlist item instead of a poll.After looking at the other site I would have to agree with Ed on this. I feel the original poster was looking for simply opening a dialog box and having the information present without having to run a search. It would overly time consuming to try and do this for every drawing in a project.

[rkmcswain]

After looking at the other site I would have to agree with Ed on this. I feel the original poster was looking for simply opening a dialog box and having the information present without having to run a search. It would overly time consuming to try and do this for every drawing in a project.Regardless of the user interface, this tool would have to search to find this information, since it's not stored anywhere. So even if the OP "opened a dialog box", it would still have to search.

Short of a continual background process that runs to perform this search, it isn't as simple as querying a database, which is what happens when you ask the current drawing "what is attached to you?" Of course if you get into document management, this sort of thing could be done I bet. Not sure if Autodesk Vault can do this.

The only other way I could see implementing this would be for AutoCAD to "tag" a drawing when is attached to another one. The downside to this would be that simply attaching an xref would modify the database of the drawing being attached, thereby changing it's date/time, etc. Not desired - around here at least.

[bmonk]

You can already do this.

See: http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com/2006/01/need-to-find-drawing-or-drawing.html

Nice, very handy tip, thank you.

[Jeversole]

After looking at the other site I would have to agree with Ed on this. I feel the original poster was looking for simply opening a dialog box and having the information present without having to run a search. It would overly time consuming to try and do this for every drawing in a project.

You'd be right in assuming thats what I was looking for. I also liked another posters Idea of using a Tagging system. But I can see how it would be an interesting bit of internal file managment to keep all the drawings up to date. Though It would still be every handy. I am going to look into that link swimming about that is a search, thouth time consuming, could be increadibly useful none the less. Keep tossing around ideas maybe we can all come up with a simple effective way to get this implemented in AutoCAD. Perhaps something to do with the project managment system AutoCAD has implimented?

[Cadtharsis]

I wish there was a way to view WHERE a drawing is being referenced out to. Much in the same way the X-reference manager allows your to see what drawings are referenced into that drawing it would be nice to see where a specific drawing is refeenced to.

Example : I have X-referenced drawing X-base Into multiple files But it has been replaced by mistake referenced it into another file I dont wish it to be ( now this is a very basic example I have other more elaborate needs like for file managment and for other drafters to easily assess a set of drawings) but I have over 100 Drawings and dont wish to search them all. So I go to the X-base drawing, open it and pull of the " X-Ref Outsource Viewer" and get a list of all the drawings X-Base is referenced into, Find the arrant drawing, go in and detach X-base From that drawing. Issue solved without wasted minute hunting through multiple files and checking the X-reference manager.

I feel , as do many people within the firm where I work, that it would be an excellent addtion to the autocad program.

INDEED. :) I had a similar need. I was able to search it up in Design Center, but all I could do was look - you can't copy the resulting list or anything. So yeah, something like this would rule.