topic Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block in AutoCAD Forum

Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing blocks

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 04:44:25 GMT

To someone who can help please,

We have a new surveyor and he has sent me a drawing file to use in my working drawing.

I tried to Xref it in but nothing happened, so i tried to insert the drawing and it comes in as a block but I am missing bits of it (it seems to be blocks in their drawing that I am missing). If I open the surveyors drawing alone, it shows everything. The surveyor sent me a .ctb file, I installed that but if I select it at plot stage it changes all my work too and doesn't bring up those missing blocks, so I didn't worry about that.

Can anyone suggest a fix to my problem please?

I am using Autocad2018

TIA

Sam

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Alfred.NESWADBA — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 06:20:40 GMT

Hi,

>> I tried to Xref it in but nothing happened

Surveying data is in most cases far away from point 0,0. So my first idea is that the _XREF command worked well, you just need to run then _ZOOM _EXTENTS so AutoCAD's display zooms to the coordinates of the surveyors drawing content.

- alfred -

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

imadHabash — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 07:47:01 GMT

Hi,

>> I tried to Xref it in but nothing happened <<

>> If I open the surveyors drawing alone, it shows everything.<<

it's obvious that your system can easily treat with surveyors drawing.so when you attache it in, the file inserted but for a reason you didn't notice that.

>> The surveyor sent me a .ctb file, I installed that but if I select it at plot stage it changes all my work too <<

it's normal since you use surveyors .ctb file.

>>..... and doesn't bring up those missing blocks, <<

why should it bring up those missing blocks ?!! ctb files for plotting issues as you said.

would you please attache here surveyor CAD file ?

Regards,

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 01:38:40 GMT

Hi Alfred,

I did try that, when I attach the xref it comes up with a warning symbol and says invalid. It just wont do it.

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 02:21:13 GMT

Hi Imad,

>> If I open the surveyors drawing alone, it shows everything.<<

it's obvious that your system can easily treat with surveyors drawing.so when you attache it in, the file inserted but for a reason you didn't notice that.

sorry I dont understand what you are telling me here

>> The surveyor sent me a .ctb file, I installed that but if I select it at plot stage it changes all my work too <<

it's normal since you use surveyors .ctb file.

yes I thought that, but wanted to explain what I had tried

>>..... and doesn't bring up those missing blocks, <<

why should it bring up those missing blocks ?!! ctb files for plotting issues as you said.

yes I thought that too, but wanted to explain what I had tried

I have attached survey drawing as requested. The blocks that are not showing are the benchmark triangle and the telephone/sewer etc. If I zoom extents I find them very far away from the drawing all gathered together. I would really appreciate some constructive advise if you have it please.

Regards SamL

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Alfred.NESWADBA — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 05:57:57 GMT

Hi,

>> when I attach the xref it comes up with a warning symbol and says invalid

Can you please show this dialog?

>> I have attached survey drawing as requested

Is this the drawing you use as XRef or where you want to insert another drawing as XRef?
It would be great to have both dwg-files.

- alfred -

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 06:48:34 GMT

Hi Alfred,

Thanks for your help.

I have attached the dwg I want to xref into, the previous attachment was the survey dwg I wanted to xref

Also I have done a quick screencast to show you what happens when I try to xref the file into my drawing, as you can see an "invalid" warning came up near my cursor and then just disappeared

Sam

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Alfred.NESWADBA — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 07:24:13 GMT

Hi,

To create the Screencast was great, that helped a lot to understand your issue!

This is the message I get (and you could see if you would have set the command-line docked 😉 )

** Error: "7796-DET-19.07.2017" is already a standard block in the current drawing

That means that a XRef with this name can't be inserted because a block with the same name already exists, As AutoCAD internally handles XRef similar to blocks, a block-name an only exist once in a drawing. Inserting the XRef (attaching it) would create a new block-defition with a name that already exists in the dwg-file ==> that's why the error message "Invalid" appeared.

What you can do now:

open the drawing "JOHNSTONE_Lo....dwg"
delete first the inserted block with that name (at the upper end of your green line)
then run _PURGE to clean the unused block-definitions, at least for this one blockname
now command _XREF (or _XATTACH) works well with your drawings (I hope so).

- alfred -

Re: Trying to bring Survey drawing into my working drawing but its missing block

Anonymous — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 22:55:48 GMT

Alfred,

Thank you so much for helping me with this, now I know what to do this is going to be one less problem I have every now and again. I am also showing a bit more of my command line 🙂

Kind regards

Sam