xref with layers frozen or turned off not showing up when regenerated

[AutoMarcus]

Hi All

I am trying to assist a colleague in a different city with an issue, hoping someone may have a tip where to start.

he has an xref that is xreffed as an overlay.

he wishes to hide the text on the xref coming through to the main drawing.

he is opening the xref and freezing the text layers, then saving.

The drawing then updates and nothing has changed.

I have suggested using the layers command in the parent drawing and turning off the xref layers with the unwanted text. i have made quite a few suggestions but i feel it may be as simple as turning a setting on or off.

any tips where to start?

cheers

i may get him to make a simple drawing with an xref with one layer in it , then work from there eliminating as we go

we cant upload the drawings to the forum unfortunately

[pendean]

>>>...he is opening the xref and freezing the text layers, then saving....<<<
So that method only works if your colleague turned off VISRETAIN when they attached the XREF, which is something no rational AutoCAD user will ever want to do. But if they feel like enduring a lot of pain they can go there.

Is there a reason they just can't freeze the xref layer in the top file like you suggested? It shows up like every other layer, but with the XREF name at the beginning. It is the best way IMHO.

[CodeDing]

@AutoMarcus ,

I believe this is intentional behavior and can only be updated in the drawing which contains your XREF (not the main drawing). Let me give an example.

Let's say I have 3 people.

Person 1 will use our parent drawing and ONLY be creating / editing model space items on layer "2" and layer "3".

Person 2 will create a child drawing which XREFs our parent drawing and person 2 will be using a viewport which ONLY wants to see items on layer "2".

Person 3 will create a child drawing which XREFs our parent drawing and person 3 will be using a viewport which ONLY wants to see items on layer "3".

Now, if person 1 were to update the parent drawing then Save with layers "2" and "3" thawed.. In the scenario you describe, Person 2 AND Person 3 would now have to re-freeze the layers they do not desire to see in their viewports. This would become a HEADACHE! Thus, I believe the behavior of layers being frozen / thawed or ON / OFF in the Parent drawing will NOT be reflected in any Child drawings that already reference the parent.

Does that make sense?

Best,

~DD

[AutoMarcus]

Hi Pendean

I am not sure of his level of experience with xrefs, 

you make a good point, i believe at a previous engineering workplace we changed the visretain setting.

i remember vaguely discussing this with you.

for some reason when he e-transmitted the files and i opened them the text was not visible, but on his computer they were.

i will get him to try freezing the text in the parent drawing

thanks again

[AutoMarcus]

hi Codeding

my head hurts trying to get my head around that. ill have a coffee and re-read your post to understand the logic

in this situation we only have one user working on the drawings

[s.borello]

@pendean gave you the solution.

[cgh6VFSY]

Btw, I am not sure if this is an answer but I found this thread when I had issues and I just realised that there is a difference between between viewport freeze and overall freeze. The viewport freeze button is a lot less clear in the layer manager. 

[pendean]

---

@cgh6VFSY wrote:

.... The viewport freeze button is a lot less clear in the layer manager. 

---

How so please? I do agree AutoCAD is not for the new user wanting to quickly discover everything, but the ViewPort specific layer settings have the letters VP ahead of them to help separate them, and the icon is different in the LAYER tab.

TIA

[cgh6VFSY]

Not sure if 10 years+ working in autocad professionally (although never as a main software) is a beginner but I can agree that it is a non-intuitive software that is not recommended for a beginner.

Yes, I remembered myself that there is a separation between the normal freeze and the VP freeze, that was the solution I posted but thank you for illustrating that with an image.

It would be a lot more intuitive if the layer properties would be PER VIEW. That is, if you are inside a specific viewport and click on layer management then ideally you would like to see the freeze button only (that is one option) and not realising that there is a second setting that does the same thing, albeit in a different way. It would also be very useful if, by default, all unused layers are deselected or at least there is an option of doing so. It drives me completely crazy when I make a large selection of say 100 lines and then use the qselect-command to select one of the layers only to find a list of every single layer in the entire file. If you make a selection that consists of 5 layers, it should only show these 5 layers as options making it very easy to select (just like any other software). 

Having experience in a lot of software that mostly works quite smoothly (revit, archicad, microstation, rhino) it is really a nightmare to have to work in autocad and remind yourself of all workarounds to poor software design.

[paullimapa]

Have your colleague open the xref dwg and rename the text layer then freeze and save. Now open the dwg with that xref overlayed and that renamed layer will now be frozen regardless of the visretain setting