Showing a layer that is frozen in the source drawing

[Anonymous]

I am using the Map functions in Civil 3D 2014, I have attached a source drawing to our working drawing using a drive alias and the queries are working. The problem comes in that we can't edit the source drawing, belongs to a different division in the company, and they often have layers turned off or frozen that we need to see in our drawings. Is there are way to query the source drawing and have it show what is on a frozen or turned off layer?

[tcorey]

When you query, objects that are on frozen layers in the source drawing will still be added to the destination drawing, but their layers will come in frozen.

[Neilw_05]

Rather than query it, can you just XREF it? If the VISRETAIN variable is set to 1 you can freeze and thaw layers, change colors and linetypes, etc. independently of the source drawing.

[Anonymous]

I'm not drawing the objects into the file, but rather previewing them. The goal for us is to not copy any objects from the source drawing just to see where certain objects are compared to the linework that we have. Preview Queries as far as I can tell don't bring in their layers so I'm not sure where to look to unfreeze any of those.

We wanted to move away from Xrefs as they create new layers and we end up with drawings of upwards of 1000 layers. Up to this point we have been using Xrefs.

[wfberry]

Perhaps you are looking for the wrong command, the word is Thaw.  You can thaw layers in the xref using the Layer Properties Manager.

Bill

[Neilw_05]

If your host drawing has the same layers as the ones you are querying, the queried objects will be displayed according to your host drawing. Thus if Layer A is frozen in their drawing but thawed in yours, objects on that layer will be displayed when queried. Of course the downside is you'd have to have all their layers in your drawing for this to work. That won't help if you are trying to keep their layers out. You can always purge after you are done using the queries if that helps.