Bring in ArchiCAD background as a Xref and color gray

We are a lighting design firm that uses AutoCAD 2007. When I xref in a drawing that has been drawn in ArchiCAD and change all xref layers to grey, the model space drawing does not show up as grey. I have been bringing in the xref on the "0" layer. I have tried copying the ArchiCAD drawing into an AutoCAD drawing before externally referencing it, but nothing works. The only way that I can get the entire background to turn grey is to explode the original drawing and turn it grey before referencing it in. Is there a better way to do this where I am not manipulating the original drawing? Any tricky settings that I don't know about?

Every entity needs to be "color bylayer" to change them when XREFed. The conversion from ArchiCAD. You might be able to create a macro to change all entities to 'bylayer'.

Here is a macro to change all entities in a block to bylayer:
-refedit;\n;ok;a;n;\\;;change;p;c;bylayer;;refclose;;


I never keep anything on layer 0, except when creating blocks. Create a layer XREFing, A-XREF.

Terry

Hi

The following threads should prove helpful / useful...

Is it possible to change the layer color of an Xref file?

Need help writing a script file - Change line color and style of a xref file

Change colours of everything in a drawing, including Blocks, Xrefs etc

Halftoning x-refs

Plus, for what it is worth, I agree with Terry above comment about not placing Xref's on Layer 0.

Have a good one, Mike

To avoid having to explode the x-ref ask your Archicad partner to do th following when they export dwg files.

In the translator settings cross off for "Explode complex Archicad elements" and "Set all elements Colours to Bylayer"

This will give you a file with simple elements all by layer (probably white) which can easily be changed as you want.

Mark Ratcliff
Rambøll Norge AS
Bergen, Norway