XREF's & Layer States Manager

[ahickmang]

Hi all, I tried googling around for this and surprisingly can't find an answer, so I think my workflow may be screwed up here. I work as an OSSF Designer and will sometimes will be doing the design for our own Civil jobs where I have created the layout, and other times working off of another Engineers work. In the past, I've always copied and pasted linework from other files into my file, which I'm not a fan of, and using the layout file as my only file and not xreferencing is a pain because that file will a lot of the time not have my settings/styles/etc. and importing all those settings is so tedious, and sometimes the file wasn't created from Autocad C3D but instead with base autocad, causing other issues. I'm instead trying to follow a more appropriate workflow. What I'm trying to do is use my design file as the "main project file", so I would be xreferencing the layout, title block, and data referencing the surface. This is going well so far, but the HUGE problem I'm having is the layer states manager. If it is our own layout file, then my layer state is already set up, but it wont work because the layers are no longer A-ROAD, but is now XREF_LAYOUT|A_ROAD, and all of the sudden my layer states really aren't working anymore. It works for my layers on my design file (eg septic layers), but any layers that are from an XREF need to be manually adjusted, every time. Now, I understand why it's not working, but I'm trying to figure out HOW to get it to work. Does anyone know a way to do this properly (assuming the xref'd layout file originates from my template, where all layers (that don't have XREF_LAYOUT| attached to them) are known and already accounted for in my layer state manager), or am I approaching this the wrong way?

Sorry for the lengthy post, was tough to summarize! 

[ahickmang]

Bump

[ahickmang]

Bump

[AllenJessup]

I don't know of any way to make the Layer States from your template work with Xrefs. What we do is use Layer Filters. To use your example. We would create a Layer Filter with a name of *A-ROAD*. Like: 

That will pick up all layers containing A-ROAD. My example is specific to one Xref. But *A-ROAD* would apply to any Xref that had that layer name in them. You can then use the Layer Filters to affect the visibility.

You could then create layer states for the drawing if you wanted. The Layer Filters can get more complicated if you wish. Also the ability to invert the filter lets you apply settings to every layer not in the filter.

[Joe-Bouza]

You have to redefine you layer states.

If you are using someone elses layers the option I see:

1. redefine the layer state every time

2. create script to rename/ merge the outside layer to your layer

3. demand the outside conform to your layers

[MMcCall402]

I wonder if you open the LAs file in some editor and edited the layer names.  Maybe with a search and replace.    (search "A-" and replace with "XREF_LAYOUT|A_")

[AllenJessup]

@MMcCall402 

I thought of that and you can edit the LAS file. However since there may be the same layers in the master drawing. Any layers that were duplicated would have to be copied and pasted into the LAS file and have the <Xref Layer Name> i.e. - Xref PLAN|A-ROAD added to them. If there were more than one Xref. That would have to be done for each one.

[ahickmang]

I'll dig into this and see if this works well. It's a new feature for me, so I appreciate the insight!

[ahickmang]

In that situation, I agree. In most cases, I will be working with the same subs that I always have, and we're working on getting layer names/properties/states set up so that we will have a layering standard. The real issue is that now every layer is going to be named XREF_LAYOUT|C-GRVL instead of just C-GRVL, and my layer state will have C-GRVL. If there were some option, similar to point clouds, like if you could say C-GRVL* and it will pick up anything with C-GRVL in the name, that would be a solution.