I've had varying degress of success (with '06 only, to this point), mostly
good results, by exporting to LandXML from your original topo drawing.
Import that XML into your 'design' file. If you update the 'existing' XML
file, you can remove the snapshot in the 'design' file and rebuild, which
will re-import the XML without breaking any data associations to that
existing surface.
Not exactly auto-update, but very reliable. I cannot speak to what this
would do in '07 within the Vault scenario. I hope it's still possible.
wrote in message news:5258705@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am working on a subdivision that is just over 100 acres. The topo was
created from aerial contours. I turned those contours into an existing
surface and built alignments, profiles, corridors and road grading. The
drawing got up to around 13 megs and was running slow and starting to crash
a lot. So what I would really like to do is break it up a little by placing
my existing contours and surface into a base drawing and bringing it into my
main drawing as an xref. Now the problem with this is that the existing
surface is the starting point for just about everything else. If I use an
xref I get the line work, but not the actual surface. I really like to keep
my drawings as simple as possible and an xref is probably as complicated as
I want it to get. So is there anyway to access that surface contained within
the base drawing without using the vault?