Xref to drawing finder

[m_kingdon]

I am pretty sure the answer to this question is going to be "no" but I thought I would try my luck.

I know you can open a drawing and find out what xrefs are loading in the drawing.  But is there a way of opening a drawing that is beinig used an a xref and find the path to those drawings?  Basically reverse file path, xref > drawing rather than drawing > xref.

I just have this drawing that I know is being used as an xref by many drawings and I am just trying to round up all those drawings.

Thanks

[Patchy · Accepted solution]

It's in ADCENTER.

and this will help you with reverse lookup.

http://lynn.blogs.com/lynn_allens_blog/2009/01/an-autocad-hip-tip-on-reverse-searching-for-xrefs.htm...

[m_kingdon]

wow that is amazing.  I never knew CAD had this feature!  Works perfectly, thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

I have an interesting problem where the above mentioned search method does not work.

We have a series of notes that we use for all or our projects. Our file structure is as follows:

MASTER FILES

CLIENT A

    >PROJECT 1

    >PROJECT 2

CLIENT B

    >PROJECT 1

    >PROJECT 2

...and so on.

Lets say someone came and copied my note-1.dwg file from Client A/Project 1 and copied it into lets say Client B/Project 2. The XREF paths are full paths and some how when they attached the note-1.dwg into their drawing they navigated to my project's notes folder instead of theirs. So now when they XOPEN their note from their drawing it opens and updates my note-1.dwg instead of theirs.

So now for my question:

I need to know the actual location for ClientB/Project 2. We have over 500 different client folders all with 10 to 200 project folders in each client folder. I do not know who 'borrowed' my file or what project it is being borrowed in. The search option in the designe center is not helpful because I am essentialy searching for a file name that each project folder contains. I need to know the "Found Path" of the note-1.dwg file which does not appear to be an option in the search results.

Thank you for your help

I appologize if this is hard to follow.

[jggerth]

one option, that relies on people actually reading their notes, would be to change _your_ note-1.dwg, and see who screams.

maybe change the font to GothicG.shx,  & set the Mtext background mask color to RED, and then make the file READ ONLY.

Someone will scream when their drawings are trashed.... hopefully before they get submitted  🙂

[Anonymous]

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@jggerth wrote:

...that relies on people actually reading their notes...

---

I believe this is the key here 🙂 Thank your for you suggestion, but we have people that do not pay attention which is why we got in this situation in the first place. It may be something that requires me to write a lisp, I just wanted to know if anyone else had this figured out before I went that rout.