Xref Question

[cmismith]

When I attach multiple xrefs to a drawing it never holds the layers I turned off when I attach the main drawing to another drawing. Help.

[S.Faris]

SOLUTION-1

Issue:

You have a drawing called A that contains several layers. You added drawing A to drawing B as an attached xref and then turned off/changed color/assigned a lineweight/etc. for some of the xref-dependent layers (from drawing A). When you added drawing B to drawing C as an xref, the xref-dependent layer properties that you had modified in drawing B were not carried through to drawing C. 

You want the properties of the layers to be maintained when you use nested xrefs.

Solution:

To maintain the status of layer properties when using nested xrefs, you need to export the layer settings in addition to the xref.

To export layer settings

1. At the command prompt, enter LAYERSTATE.
2. In the Layer States Manager, create a new layer state to capture the current properties for all the layers.
3. Click 'Close' to exit the dialog box.

Additionally, you can export all saved layer states to a separate layer state (.las) file, using the 'Export' button within the Layer States Manager.

To restore layer settings in another file

1. At the command prompt, enter LAYERSTATE.
2. In the Layer States Manager, click the 'Import' button.
3. Be sure 'Files of type:' is set for DWG and then browse to the DWG file which contains the layer state you wish to import, then click 'Open'.
4. Alternately, if you exported a layer state (.las) file, change the 'Files of type:' setting at the bottom of the dialog to LAS, browse to the .las file created with the export process, then click 'Open'.
5. With the layer state you want highlighted, click the Restore button.
6. Click 'Close' to exit the Layer States Manager.

Reference : https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Mainta...

SOLUTION-2

Issue:

Nested xrefs do not reflect Visretain settings. For example:

1. You create Drawing A, which contains a number of layers.
2. You create Drawing B into which you xref Drawing A.
3. You turn off some of the layers that were imported with Drawing A.
4. You set the VISRETAIN system variable to 1.
5. You create Drawing C into which you xref Drawing B.

Note that the layers you turned off in Drawing B reappear in Drawing C.

Solution

VISRETAIN retains the settings in the current drawing but not those in the xref. In the case of nested xrefs, the original settings are displayed, so each time the nested xref is inserted into a new file, you have to reset the VISRETAIN to 1.

To work around this issue, use the XREF command Bind option rather than the Insert option when binding the nested xrefs into the parent drawings.