Visretain and Viewports

[Anonymous]

Our linework drawing is reference into several other drawings, i.e. erosion control, hydro, etc. I changed a couple of layers line weights and plot styles in the linework drawing, that I wanted reflected in all of the drawings referencing the linework drawing. Rather than making all these changes in each host drawing, since that would be a pain, I set visretain to 1. That worked great for updating the settings. The problem is now all of the layers from the linework drawing are thawed in all of the host drawings. Why does visretain reset vport freeze? Is there a way to keep layers current while still having them keep vport specific settings? I didn't have any vport overrides set for any of these layers, but I can imagine it would have reset them as well. Can anyone confirm?

It would be nice if visretain had four options:
0 - changes in host take presedent
1 - all layer properties in xref are reset
2 - all layer properties in xref are reset, however paper space/vport settings and vport overides remain
3 - all layer properties in xref are reset, however paper space/vport settings remain, vport overides are reset

[Anonymous]

As far as I know, Visretain should only affect the model space layers in
your host drawings. It should not have affected the Viewport Layer display.
I suggest you save a layer state for your viewports in your host drawings
before setting visretain in the source file. If Visretain is changing your
viewport settings you can at least restore them from a layer state file.

By the way, if VISRETAIN = 1 then your host drawings will have independent
layer display. VISRETAIN=0 will force all host drawings to use the same
layer display settings as the source file.

My experience with Visretain is based on 2004 format DWG. There may have
been changes made to the variable since then.

In regards to your enhancement requests, I agree the variable needs some
enhancements.

I have been proposing a wish for a function I call Viewport Styles where we
can create settings for a view port and save it as a style. We could then
assign that style to any viewports that need to display with those settings
(color, linestyle, lineweights, freeze, etc.). Any edits to the style would
automtically update the viewports. It would be a lot more efficient than
creating layer states and having to step through every layout to update the
viewports anytime it changed.

So far AUGI has never offered the idea for a vote though. My guess is few
people on the board do civil work. Otherwise I think they would immediately
recognize the usefullness of such a feature.

[Anonymous]

I really like your idea for viewport styles. We have a lisp routine that will freeze all the correct layers in the viewport, but then you have to manually apply any overrides.

Maybe visretain didn't disturb layouts in 2004 but it does in 2009, at least in my drawing.

Thanks for the help.

[Anonymous]

2015 and this has not been materialized yet!

[CurtisClarkCA]

I thought I read somewhere that this issue was resolved in AutoCAD 2016, that now VISRETAIN variable does not affect the viewport overrides...

Please, can anyone confirm this??

I am effectively the CAD coordinator here, and our office still uses 2013. If this is resolved in 2016, I will push hard to upgrade our office to that suite. This thawing viewport freeze thing is killing me. I'm forced to set VISRETAIN to 1 and leave it there, but any changes I make to the layers in my xref need to be manually updated if I want any consistency between drawings. 

[CurtisClarkCA]

Just to follow up on the above post:

My office now has the 2016 suite (and all recent service packs installed), and I can confirm that the issue is still unaddressed.

That is to say, having VISRETAIN set at 0, and reloading an xref (changed or not) still overrides any viewport overrides set by the user (by removing them completely) in all viewports. My test included both VP Colour overrides and VP Freeze overrides.

Does anyone have an idea as to a good next step for trying to see this resolved? I am sure the developers are busy and I don't want to take any more of their time than what it will take to explain the issue at hand and request a patch (or at least a change to subsequent versions) to allow for higher viewport override priority.

[CurtisClarkCA]

You are correct, VISRETAIN should only affect model space layers in your host drawing. However, currently it overrides viewport override settings, like having certain layers off in individual viewports. I know you might know this already, just trying to clarify for others, and raise awareness in order to get it resolved.

[Anonymous]

We're up to version 2017 now and this has still not been resolved.

[CADgrump]

Hello:

FYI: I just ended a project in CAD 2012 and switched over to 2016 and we still have the same problem with VISRETAIN canceling the layer manager states in viewports.   I was hoping I could find info that it was just a local setting somewhere, but no...

As far as taking up the developers' time --- please do so.   They clearly did not test this "improvement" with any end users.   I have sent rants to the Autodesk support emails that I can find (in the past), but they don't get a real response from anyone.   The endless quirks and work-arounds in AutoCAD makes me...grumpy; so perhaps your more even tone will get farther than my little notes of end-user joy.   That is, if you have the time to spend.

Cheers.

- Jay

[CurtisClarkCA]

Hey, thanks for the backing. I don't recall if I ever sent this one on to Autodesk formally or not (I remember doing it for something, but don't remember what). 

What is more important is I think I found something that will help us all! I will post in a separate response replying to the original poster to get the most attention for it.

[CurtisClarkCA]

I have found something that solves our problems!

To confirm, I just tested it and the issue still has not been resolved as of the 2019 release. However, another function that I think was recently added in a new release kind of solves the problem!

The function is called 'Reset Xref Layer Properties'.

With VISRETAIN set to default 1, this function works to reset selected xref layer properties back to the way they are in the base drawing, without affecting any viewport overrides!

I detail my solution in my reply to another similar thread, found at the link below. (Please let me know if the link doesn't work, as I don't know how the permalink button works.)

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-forum/visretain/td-p/5501098

Please let me know if this solution helped you!