Referencing (Xref)

[SlowTrain]

I am trying to set up an orderly way to manage my referencing.

My question is:
How can I set it up so that my base drawings reference each other and when I reference the base drawing that I need for my sheet file, all the referenced files come in.

So, for example... I am doing Civil work
I want to have a TOPO base that is referenced into the SITE base and then have a Sediment Control base file that has both SITE and TOPO in it.
And then when I do a sheet file for Sediment Control, I just reference the Sediment Control base file and all three references come in.

The thing is that I am trying to do this and if I reference the SITE it comes in with the TOPO, but if I reference the Sediment Control it comes in by itself.

I don't want to bind or anything like that, but does anybody know how to do this?

Matthew Batcher
RJK Engineering
Cecil County MD

 

[lpseifert]

If I understand your question, I think you can accomplish what you want by xrefing (word?)your drawings by attachment rather than by overlay.

____________________
Acad2006, Terramodel

 

[civilsid]

That sounds sort of confusing but I think I know what you are getting at.

XREF's can be "chained" which can be helpful but can also be confusing. If your SITE dwg has a xref to the TOPO dwg (that is you open SITE and xref in TOPO) and then save SITE with the external reference.

Now, you open a third dwg your SEDIMENT file. If you xref in SITE, it will automatically load anything xref'd by SITE including TOPO.

If you open SEDIMENT and then xref in topo, it has nothing to do with SITE.

Does this help? or clear as mud?

As a rule of thumb, I lock down anything that should never be modified such as survey points, existing grade, etc. From there you just need to try and be logical about your work flow.

Another important thing to note- you can sometimes get in trouble doing an edit-in-place of an external reference. Especially if it from an older version of CAD.

I tend to keep things fairly "unlinked" until my project is near finish so that each piece can always reference any other piece and it only takes a minute to bring it in.

 

[SlowTrain]

Thank you for the information. This "chain" thing is what I was going for and things were acting funny so I posted the thread and then I saved and closed out of Autocad and re-opened the files and it worked right. I wanted to leave it out there, though, to see what people would say.
Thanks again,
Matt

 

[SlowTrain]

What I am trying to do is set up an overall process to be used for typical jobs.

Here is a question: Xrefs are Attached or Overlaid and then there is Bind and such.. How does that all relate to each other?

 

[lpseifert]

Attached xrefs will show nested xrefs, overlaid xrefs will show only the dwg that is inserted. (I think)

____________________
Acad2006, Terramodel

 

[mincemeat]

Let's say c100.dwg is your sheet file ( if you don't like layout tabs). Your Site.dwg file is your base file. You have a survey file Survey.dwg, a Building file from an architect Bldg.dwg, and drawing X.dwg a drawing showing truck turning radii.


Your Site.dwg file will have the Survey.dwg and Bldg.dwg files referenced as "attachments" because we want them to show up in every drawing we reference the Site.dwg file to. The X.dwg file would be attached as an "overlay" just to move around and develop your site with.

When you reference in the Site.dwg into you sheet file C100.dwg, the Survey.dwg and Bldg.dwg file will also attach as nested xreferences but X.dwg will not be present.

I hope that makes sense.