XREF Purge after moving Child contacts or Coil location?

[MTSII]

When inserting child contacts at the required line reference ie. say 5-62 and 5-63. If these contact s are then moved to 5-78 and 5-79 and a cross update is performed on the coil, the new xref's show as 5-78, 5-79 but also shows ??-62, ??-63. Is it not possible to move the contacts to a new location or should they be deleted and re-applied? Am I missing something in the way xref updates? or just using the child contacts wrong? Is there a way to purge the old infomation?

[dougmcalexander]

Did you run the crossreference update project-wide?

[MTSII]

Wow, that made things worse. Many Xref have duplicate non-existent references. See screenshots.

Screenshot 9 after Project wide xref.

Screenshot 10 & 11 after Component Cross reference - Active Drawing (pick)

[dougmcalexander]

Have you tried AEREBUILDDB?  As a last resort delete the project scratch database in the Support/User folder. 

[MTSII]

This is really getting messed up now. Ran AEREBUILDDB, populated many previously good xref's with phantom ??- locations. Renamed "project".mdb to .old, re-opened project, ran AEREBUILDDB, no different. Many of the xref's that were correct are now showing additional bogus ??- tags. This is getting worse. Even the Parent/Child relationship cannot find each other when running individual xref update at both the coil and the contact.

When you rename the .mdb file how do you get the program to create a new one from scratch? Running AEREBUILDDB after rename did not work. Is this the correct command?

[dougmcalexander]

You don't need to rebuild the database.. Just delete it. AutoCAD Electrical rebuilds it when you activate the project. You need to close the program in order to delete the database. If you post your affected drawings I will have a look as soon as I can. Im teaching thus week but can look later in the hotel. You must have something else wrong if rebuilding the database doesn't correct it.

[MTSII]

Thanks Doug. I think I got it now. Deleted .mdb, activated another project, re-activated by original. It created new .mdb and I ran xref update "project". All now appear to fall in line and no more ??-

Question. Is it safe to just move Parent/Child symbols when altering a drawing or should I delete and re-enter in new location? What is the correct method?

btw. kudos for the feedback.

[dougmcalexander]

You can move them, but use AutoCAD Electrical commands, not plain AutoCAD.

[dougmcalexander · Accepted solution]

AutoCAD Electrical will automatically create/update the project scratch database for the project that was active when you closed it down, so there is no need to activate a different project and reactivate the one in question.  There is a file in the Support/User folder named lastproj.fil.  It records the active project at the time you shut down AutoCAD Electrical.  You do not need to edit this file.  I am just making you aware of how the software retains such information.