Update layer changes in entire project

[Anonymous]

I have made some lineweight changes to several layers in one of my drawings, but notice that those changes only reflect on that specific drawing and not across all drawings in my project.

Is there a way to update/overwrite all the drawings with the changes to the layers I have made. This could be for adding new layers, changing lineweights, or any other changes. It seems absurd to have to go into each drawing individually and make all the same changes in the layer manager. I assume there is a better way to do this, I'm just not sure what that method is.

Thanks!

Justin

[TRLitsey]

Hi there,

I think you are referring to your ‘title’ block which has the settings for thing like layers, line weight, ect. If I understand that correctly the ‘title block’ it is just a block like any other ACE block.  I would try to save just the title block to your desktop, the wblock command may work for that or just copy the title block and paste it into a new drawing and save it to the desktop, but keep the name the same.  Make the changes to the new title block drawing, and then use a project wide update to tell ACE to replace the old title block with the new revision of the title block.

Please mark this a solution if it works for you, kudos are always welcome

Good luck

[jseefdrumr]

I'm not sure about anything that will do what you're after here. There could be a LISP routine floating around out there somewhere, if so, it's likely to be old. Unfortunately, there is no tool within ACADE project management that will do this.

I think you are faced with doing this manually on each drawing that needs to be edited.

It's a long shot -- but if any of the layers you need to change are not in use, you can PURGE them out. Then, copy some object that is on that layer from the good drawing and paste into the one where you purged out the layer. The layer will be recreated with the correct properties.

There is also a LISP out there called 'Steal' or something of the like, it will allow you to push layers from one drawing into another. Not sure what happens if you try to push in a layer that already exists, though -- maybe it will overwrite the existing properties, maybe not.

In the future, if you need to make changes that you will want to maintain for upcoming drawings, do so in your templates. Ideally, you should have a single template file that defines all of the layers you use, and also all of the ones created on the fly by ACADE. (That last part is the only way to manage the properties of a layer that ACADE creates; in the absence of some definition made by you, it uses defaults that you can't control.) This template should be used to start all drawings.

I have two templates, one for schematics and another for panel layouts. This is to minimize the number of layers in my drawings.

Hope this helps,

Jim

[TRLitsey · Accepted solution]

Hi again,

Here is what I just did using ACE 2014 on Win 7:

Click on title block to select it, type ‘wblock’ on the command line, the title block name should be selected as the source. Select location to copy to as your desk top.  Once it has been saved to your desktop open it and type ‘layer’ to open the layer dialog and add the layers you want, add other drawing specification then save, not ‘save as’ just save.  Close modified drawing.  Go back to your project.  With a project drawing in the active project open select the Swap/Update tool  from the Ribbon > Schematic > Edit tool bar.  Click on the title block, for the ‘swap with’ travers to the desk top and select your modified title block.  You can take the action on just the active drawing or project wide swap/update.

Good luck

Please mark this as a solution if it works for you, kudos are always welcome

[dougmcalexander]

I like TRLitsey's approach.  Here is perhaps another option, in case eerything isn't in a block. Try the Layer States Manager (see attached).  You can save the current layer state and export as a .las file.  Open each drawing where the change needs to take affect and import from the.las file.  In the attached example notice that I changed the lineweight of the layer named ATTACHED to 0.30 and used the Import option to update the layers in a different drawing.

While this isn't a project-wide automated function, it might ease the pain a bit.  It is important with AutoCAD Electrical to get your template fine tuned before you create too many drawings.  I dedicate an entire day to this as part of my 3-day onsite startup assistance. It's that important.

On the Tips/Tricks page ofmy web site you will find a 12-step guide for creating a smart template for use with AutoCAD Electrical.