Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
List of external references:
You can change between the List view and Tree view of
your drawing's external references just by clicking the appropriate button at the
top of the palette (refer to Figure 18-8). You can resize the columns by dragging
the column dividers or re-sort the list by clicking the column header names, just
as in Windows Explorer.
Unload:
Right-click an xref and choose Unload to make the selected xref disappear
from the on-screen display of your drawing and from any plots you do of it, but re-
tain the pointer and attachment information. Right-click again and choose Reload
to redisplay an unloaded xref.
Reload:
Right-click an xref and choose Reload to force AutoCAD to reread the se-
lected xrefed DWG file from the disk and update your drawing with its latest con-
tents. This feature is handy when you share xrefs on a network and someone has
just made changes to a drawing that you've xrefed.
Detach:
Right-click an xref in the External References palette and choose Detach to
completely remove the selected reference to the external file from your drawing.
Bind:
Right-click an xref and choose Bind to bring the selected xref into your draw-
ing and turn it into a block. You might, for example, use this function to roll up a
complex set of xrefs into a single archive drawing.
In many offices, binding xrefs without an acceptable reason for doing so
is a crime as heinous as exploding blocks indiscriminately. In both cases, you're
eliminating an important data-management link. Find out what the policies are in
your company. When in doubt, keep yourself out of a bind. And even when you do
have a good reason to bind, you generally should do it on a copy of the host draw-
ing.
Open:
Right-click an xref and choose Open to open one or more xref drawings in
separate drawing windows. After you edit and save an xref drawing, return to the
host drawing and use the Reload option in the External References palette to show
the changes.
None of these options (other than opening and editing the xref) affects the xrefed draw-
ing itself; it continues to exist as a separate DWG file. If you need to delete or move the
DWG file that the xref refers to, do it in Windows Explorer.
