Issues with broken links to xrefs

[leekennewell]

I need to stop broken links to a "parent" drawing after its xref has been moved to another folder location. 

To create my component drawings, the detailed views come from the assembly drawing they feature in (so in the component drawing i freeze all layers within the xref apart from the layer the component i want to detail is on).  My problem is when drawings are approved and released within the company, all the component drawings are moved to another folder location, but the xref doesn't follow to the same folder.  Consequently, none of the views in the component drawings display because the xref is no longer in the same folder.  I have experimented with the different xref path types but no joy.  

Other bits of (possibly) useful information:  Changing my company's process, i.e have all the files moved together whilst in the same folder, is not an option.  I work on a server and use i AutoCAD 2024.

[paullimapa]

No perfect solution when you move the component xref (child) dwgs to a new location.

The host (parent) dwgs will not magically know where their children have all gone regardless of what paths (absolute, relative or none) you used as you've experienced. 

Now a possible solution (assuming there are no other dwgs that end up staying in that folder where the child dwgs were stored and all the children are all moved together to a new folder location) you can run the Reference Manager tool which comes with AutoCAD as a separate app (found in the AutoCAD 2024 program folder), select the folder where all the parent dwgs are and then do a search & replace for the old folder name with the new folder name for the child dwgs. The Reference Manager will automatically without opening any dwgs process this command.

[TomBeauford]

You didn't give much of a description of the before and after folder locations or how they're referenced to each other.
Commonly projects have a main folder with other drawings, images & documentation in subfolders. Then the entire project with it's folder structure is moved. In this case as long as relative paths were used from the start they wouldn't require any modification.

[RSomppi]

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@leekennewell wrote:

My problem is when drawings are approved and released within the company, all the component drawings are moved to another folder location, but the xref doesn't follow to the same folder. 

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That is the expected behavior. Whoever decided to move the files hasn't taken this into consideration.

Is copying the file (instead of moving) acceptable?