I apologize in advance...

[ggunn]

...for all the stupid questions, but my company laid off our AutoCAD expert, and the maintenance of a complex set of drawings has been dumped on me, and my AutoCAD skills are rudimentary.

Q1: How do I get a viewport to point to an Xref instead of model space in the current drawing?

Q2: Why in some of the drawings, in model space, is everything so low contrast that I can barely make anything out?

[hwalker]

A1. Is the xref already in model space in the drawing. If it is, double click in the viewport and use pan and zoom to move to the xref.

A2. The layers might be locked or the colour of the layers might be set to grey.

Supplementary answer. If your company will allow it post one of the drawings and let us look at it and we should be able to type (talk) you through your problems

[ggunn]

"A1. Is the xref already in model space in the drawing. If it is, double click in the viewport and use pan and zoom to move to the xref."

No, it's not; that's what I need to figure out how to do. I have gone into model space, and Insert > Attach, selected the Xref, selected Relative Path, and hit OK. It tells me to set an insertion point, and when I do that, the dialog box goes away and nothing has been inserted.

[Bob_Zurunkle]

Viewports can be locked and unlocked and you can zoom way out then zoom in on what you want to show. Find a viewing scale and then lock it.

The low contrast sounds like a fade control on an XREF. It's found on the Display tab of the OPTIONS.

[ggunn]

Additionally, on some of the tabs of this drawing, the viewports show features in another Xref, but those features are not visible in model space. It looks like the viewport points directly to the Xref, not anything in model space of the current drawing.

[Charles_Shade]

Pay attention to the Command line when you are inserting the XREF. If the file you are trying to XREF is a file that is already XREF'ed into a another XREF file in the drawing it will not insert. Too many XREF's. You should see a warning.

Make sure the drawing is free of XREF's and that each file you want ot XREF is clean as well.

[pendean]

1. Click on a layout. Start MVIEW command and click once, pull the rectangle that appears to an opposite corner then click again. Now you got a viewport. Double click inside it abs use ZOOM and/or PAN command to find what you want to show.

A viewport is just a window that looks at your model tab content.

XREF: it stands for EXTERNAL REFERENCE. External means the actual file is outside of the DWG you are in.
And yes you can attach an XREF in a layout or in modelspace. You cannot use a viewport, all by itself, to look at another file without that file being 'xrefed' in.

[ggunn]

Another frustration. I typed a lengthy response and lost it when I tried to post it. Ah, well, onward and upward...

"And yes you can attach an XREF in a layout or in modelspace. You cannot use a viewport, all by itself, to look at another file without that file being 'xrefed' in."

Ah, then maybe I am not seeing what I think I am in the original drawing. In paper space there is a window that looks like a viewport and behaves like one (panning and zooming when unlocked, etc.), but whose content is in model space of an Xref file and is NOT visible in model space of the drawing itself. That is what I am trying to recreate in a new layout, but accessing the content of a different Xref file.

[pendean]

If you can, post this problem DWG file and let's all have a look.
It may not be an XREF, but a block... .

BTW, You cannot 'access' a layout of another file (no Insert, no Xref etc.): only it's modelspace content.

[ggunn]

"If you can, post this problem DWG file and let's all have a look.
It may not be an XREF, but a block... .

BTW, You cannot 'access' a layout of another file (no Insert, no Xref etc.): only it's modelspace content."

I really can't post this on an open forum. I mean, I don't know if my company would object or not, so I have to be conservative. Anyway, as succinctly as I can describe it, here is what I have:

The exisiting sheet set is a 25 page design pack. On some of the sheets in one of the drawing files there are what look very much like viewports, the contents of which are in the model space of an Xref file and which are not visible in model space of the drawing file itself. I have new content which I have placed in model space of the Xref. I have copied one of the sheets to a new layout tab in the drawing file and deleted all the content except for the title block. I want to establish a fresh window (viewport or whatever) into the Xref file to display the new content.

I realize that could work around this by simply placing the new content in model space of the drawing file and opening a viewport to it, but I am trying to figure out how the existing file set is constructed and observe the same methodology.

[pendean]

open this file.
Start LIST command (type it).
Begin to select these mystery objects and find out what they are and more.
We can;t rely on "what look very much like" sadly.

[ggunn]

Thanks for all your replies. With your help I was able to cobble together a document which I believe will give our customer what he needs. There is still a lot I need to figure out but I made some progress today and I managed (just barely) to do it without hurling the computer out the window.

I'm ready for a cold beer.

Establishing solid connectivity between components ensures that when you throw the computer out the window, the printer goes with it.