AutoCAD Architecture Visualization

[#1]

When doing my renderings I'm working with 2 files.  I have my base model that only has doors, walls and windows drawn in 3d as I use these for most of my drawings.  Then I create a drawing that I will render from and xref the base model into.  Into this new drawing I draw all my equipment, casework, etc. in 3d for the purpose of rendering.

Here's the question part.  Lately (as in today) my 3d drawing looks fine when set to realistic, but when I render it atleast 1 or 2 outside walls don't render.  Is this due to the walls being xref'ed?  Is it better practice to keep them all in 1 file?

Thank you for your time.

[#2]

I think that what you are doing is the best way to go about it.  I also do all my renderings in View/xref drawings, one to avoid the sky bug infecting my original drawing, but also to avoid slowing my base drawing(s) down with all the rendering "stuff". 

 Do you mean the wall is there, but the material doesn't show correctly when rendered, or are you saying that the walls disappear when rendered?        Could the walls be on a layer that is turned off in the xref drawing?  Have you checked your 3d Config?  Is it a consistent error?  I've seen some crazy glitches where just getting out of ACA and back in makes a difference.

[#3]

It's now a few days later and haven't had that problem again since then.  What it would do is show the wall in my model in any of the preset views whether the visulation was set to realistic, conceptual, hidden, etc.  When I went to render it though it would not render one or two of the walls. 

On the drawing i was having trouble with I just copy clipped in my walls from the base model and had no problems.  All my other drawings have the walls xref'd in.

[#4]

AutocAD or perhaps ACA is just not good at cleaning out the memory.  I've had lots of times where I've needed to reboot to refresh the memory.  For e.g. I make changes and render and it renders the old model.  I have even deleted items that don't show in any view except when rendering.  This is a common occurance in ACA2009 and I found 11 much worse for rendering.  Often when I set the saved view, the old model turns up in the shaded perspective view and will render despite anything I do.  Saving does refresh some anomolies at times but not all.  A restart is required.  The problem is mostly evidient when working for a while (i.e. memory is getting full).  

I render in the original file so I don't have to mess with materials and x-ref's.  To me it's simpler and more straight forward but I have done it your way with success.  I just don't like that I've tweaked the materials in the host file but not where the materials first came from and are applied to the object.