View bound xrefs

[Anonymous]

Hi, I'm not a Autocad Draftee. I'm a document controller that is trying to ID errors with 2600 drawings. Some files are so large - 250,000kb, they won't open. They have bound xref's in them. We want to ask the contractor to unbind them and attach them as normal xref's. I need to view if a drawing has bound xref's. How do I do that? I just want to SEEEEEEE...

[imadHabash]

When xrefs get bind,it's convert to BLOCKS. so- as i know- it's difficult what you asked.

Regards,

[Charles_Shade]

Welcome to the Autodesk Forums!

The above is corrrect in that the XREF is now a Block and part of the drawing. And as is said it will be difficult to remove. You can Erase the Block and then purge the drawing of the information but now it is gone.

If the DWG file will not open, running Recover on these may fix the errors for you. From the File dropdown you will find the Drawing Recovey Manager or Recover... and can use this to hopefully fix and open problem drawings.

You are correct that the Originator will need to make the change for you in regards to the Bound XREF. They can also use ETRANSMIT (if available on their version) to send all relevant DWG files and other drawing info as one package.

Attach is the XREF option they should use.

[3wood]

Another way without open a drawing with AutoCAD:

Use Reference Manager (installed under AutoCAD folder) to check if it has any xrefs.

If not, it is a suspicious drawing.

[Anonymous]

Even if they are now bound xrefs appearing as blocks? The blocks are so large some drawings won't open

[dgorsman]

You might be able to get away with a partial open if the file is set up for that.  With this method, you can select which layers to to load when the drawing is opened, thus reducing the amount of memory required.

And +1 to the others - once bound, thats it.  Tell those upstream to NOT bind and just include the XREF files.  Make sure the request gets down to those doing the operation, not just their own document control or project manager.

[Anonymous]

Sorry I probably should have clarified more. I would like to view the blocks that were once xrefs to confirm that's the problem making the drawing so large. Do you know how I view the blocks?

[Anonymous]

How do I do that?

[Jay_B]

Just a brain storm here.
If the files won't open easily you could try creating a New drawing and then open Design Center.
Open one of the files in Design Center and go to Blocks. drag/drop a block into the new drawing.
This should allow viewing of the blocks and if you save new drawings (derived from bound xrefs)
one by one this may provide clues to confirm where the large file size is coming from.
I've not tried this on a bound xref dwg before. Design Center can be launched by ctrl2 or keyin _adcenter.

[Anonymous]

How do I locate Reference Manager? I can't see it.

[Jay_B]

It's an external Application and can be found at:
Start Menu>All Programs>AutoDesk>Reference Manager

[Anonymous]

Hello I have opened Reference Manager and I have two options when opening the drawing:

Add all xrefs automatically regardless of nesting level

Add only the first level xrefs

see attached. Which one should I choose?

[3wood]

Choose first level option, it is enough to figure out if a file has xrefs and it is faster then the nested levels option.

[dbroad]

I'm not sure that the reference manager will be of any help you to since all the xrefs have been bound.  

For the files you can open, the express tools blocktoxref can be used to recreate the xrefs and to shrink the drawings.  It is doubtful that the contractor doesn't have a copy with the xrefs intact though.

The drafter who created the drawings is in the best position to know which the original xrefs were but if the xrefs were bound as xbinds, then names will have a unique character, in the form filename$0$symbolname.  This would be true for layer names, blocks within the bound drawing, etc.

If you cannot open the drawings, your contractor most certainly should be able to.  Otherwise, they had no business creating the situation.

There are ways to open the drawing without using AutoCAD (objectdbx, AutoCAD core console). The core console could be used to run scripts to batch process a folder of drawings.  I am not an expert in such matters but have done it before.

[3wood]

Reference Manager is good enough to tell her if a drawing still has xrefs, then she can exclude this drawing from inspection list because bound drawing doesn't have xrefs anymore.

[dbroad]

My impression from post 1, was that the contractor had delivered an entire project without any xrefs. If that is the case, using the reference manager won't yield much information.  In addition, just because a drawing has an xref doesn't mean it also doesn't have bound xrefs.  If a drawing has no xrefs it doesn't mean that it is a problem drawing.  It could just have been a drawing that was originally an xref source.  Reference manager is a good tool to study file dependencies but reading anything more than that might be a mistake.

[Anonymous]

Ref Manager shows

I wish to now view them as blocks only in the drawing and started a new post/thread asking how I do that. 

Update: my boss just found out how to view all blocks in a drawing.  Tools - Autolisp - Visual LISP - and i can't recall the rest.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I am viewing all blocks under Visual LISP and Browse Drawing Database and it says there are many of these:

<X_C_Roads$)$X_CRoads (Civil3D) ... etc...

are they converted xrefs into blocks?

[dbroad]

See my first post. The original xref probably was X_C_Roads, although the special "<" and ")" characters make it difficult to say for sure.  Typically, there should be a number between the double dollar signs.   It has been bound as an xbind.  This should make it easier to convert back into xrefs because it makes it simpler to identify them.

Another tool to view the database without opening it in the editor is to use the design center, (adc).

This allows you to view blocks, layers, etc.

[Anonymous]

I found my answer also in the welcome screen confirming what I saw under AUTOLISP is the bound xrefs.thanks for your help all.

Bind

Converts a specified DWG reference into a block, making it a permanent part of the drawing.

The xref-dependent named objects, such as layer names, of the former xref are added to your drawing. In each xref-dependent named object, the vertical bar (|) is replaced with three new characters: a number

(usually 0) between two dollar signs ($). The number is increased if the same name already exists in the current drawing.