Viewport specific frozen layers not printing or saving properly.

[amkus2]

Inside my specific viewports I have certain layers frozen and others not frozen on the same drawing to show different information, when I SHIFT + RIGHT CLICK all sheet tabs in paper space + Publish Selected Layouts and print a set of sheets, the frozen layers appear on the plot. If I type PLOT and set up the print individually, however, the viewport layers remain frozen and all is good. This is not ideal because I want to be able to publish all sheets at once. When I save the drawing and close and reopen the drawing all frozen layers return to their base states which means I would have to refreeze each layer every time I want to print the sheets.

1. VISRETAINMODE = 1, 2, 512, 2047, doesn't matter I tried them all.

2. The object that has frozen layers is an XREF and is being frozen through VIEWPORTS in PAPER SPACE. Each viewport has different layers that are being frozen.

3. My External References in the OPEN AND SAVE tab of the OPTIONS menu looks like this if it matters:

How do I get them to print in the publish selected layouts?

How do I get them to save between sessions?

Why does this happen so I can stop it from happening again?

[sambremer]

A couple of tips to make sure that your Batch Plot/Publish will work correctly.

1. Make sure you apply your standard page setup to all of your layouts. 
2. Make sure to UNCHECK the box that says "Publish in background" in the Publish dialogue box.
   • This one is important, plotting in background always creates weird graphics issues

[amkus2]

I applied the same page setup to all layouts and removed the "Publish in background" and I ended up with the same result where the frozen viewport layer still plotted.

[sambremer]

Just some internal rambling:

• It shouldn't be a viewport issue if it is plotting fine with just a single layout.
• You sure everything is FROZEN, not OFF?
• What printing drive are you using for your page setup? Usually the built in AutoCAD PDF drivers work well.
• Do you have all of your AutoCAD updates installed?
• Make sure you do a VP FREEZE, not just the regular FREEZE.
• Make sure the layer that your XREF is on is not Layer 0. It should be on a dedicated XREF layer.

[amkus2]

Inside viewport on the XREF:

Page setup:

ACAD is up to date

XREF is on the XREF layer which I created and test when you mentioned layer 0 but the result was still the same.

[sambremer · Accepted solution]

I'm checking my visretain settings, I publish all the time with no issues and my settings are:

• VISRETAIN = 1
• VISRETAIN MODE = 0

I suppose you could attach a couple CAD files so I could test them out on my machine. You could also try to uninstall/reinstall AutoCAD.

[amkus2 · Accepted solution]

I just tried changing my VISRETAIN to 1 and that fixed the freeze issue, but it causes another problem down the line when I change an XREF layer in the origin file and it does not update.

Thanks.

[sambremer]

I'm glad that the other system variables fixed your initial issue. That is strange that your XREF layers aren't updating from the origin file. Have you tried detaching and referencing the XREF again? You also should make sure if you can set it as a relative path.

[amkus2]

The goal was to not have to reattach the XREF when changes were made to the layering in the origin file, the only way I found this would work was with VISRETAIN at 0, but that does not work when trying to retain frozen layers with in viewports on the XREF.

[sambremer]

I haven't tried this much but you could try saving the layer states of the current XREF. Then when you re-attach the XREF, import those layer states back to the XREF. I would obviously try this with a test file first.