Only Reference Specific Layers

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to reference specific layers from a drawing in an xref and not the entire drawing?

[pendean]

Nope.

But you can freeze/off those XREF layers in the top file and keep them that way by turning on VISRETAIN variable.

[Anonymous]

That sucks

[pendean]

No, that's how it works: learn to work with the program, not fight it 🙂

[nrz13]

You can set up a Layer Filter so that only the layers you want visible are shown in the Layer Properties Manager.  The others are still there if you remove the filter, but the end result is the same.  You would use this in conjunction with freezing unwanted layers.

[jggerth]

If you set INDEXCTL to 3 in your XREF drawings, then the memory used in the target drawing will be reduced to take into account any clipping and frozen layers that you set in the target drawing.  the filesize of the XREF will increase slightly, but should load faster as only the required layers and spatial area will be loaded into the target drwing.

To bring in LAYERS only, you'd need Map3D and then query in the layers from the source drawing.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I will use the filters etc but I prefer to just bring in the layers I want. Obviously this is related to my other question about not showing raster in linked files but I would also love to only bring in the final layers and not all the working data. I will set the variable as you suggest too. It's just that both are a pain and require more work.

It does suck though as it seems like a reasonable requirement and would make my life easier!

[pendean]

"To bring in LAYERS only, you'd need AutoCAD Map3D and then query in the layers from the source drawing."

[Anonymous]

I find that queries using map functionality generally cause a major slow-down and chaos in my drawings. Worse, someone with plain AutoCAD can't then view my files.