About Managing Xrefs

Exploding AEC objects into primitive AutoCAD objects is more complex when you do not use the “Automatically Bind Xrefs” option. This is because objects in xrefs actually belong to a different drawing file than the one in which they are currently being viewed. There are 2 methods you can use to convert the xref files.

• Use the Bind Xrefs option. This performs an Xref Bind on all xrefs before beginning the conversion process. This option ensures that the visual appearance of the converted drawing remains the same as the original. However, this also results in the xref drawing becoming part of the converted drawing.
• Run the Explode AEC Objects command on each of the xref drawings first, before running it on the host file. This also requires that you re-identify all converted xrefs when you have changed their name by specifying a different output file.

Note: If you use the Explode AEC Objects, you should first copy all parent and xref drawing files. Then, open the parent drawing and use the Xref Manager to change the saved path for each xref. Select them one at a time, and change each file name in the Xref Found At edit box. Finally, open, explode, and save each of the drawings.

You should choose the explode method only when it is necessary to keep the drawing as separate xrefs is mandatory. In some cases you may not get the same graphics because objects displayed in the xref drawings are based on the viewport display configuration in effect in the host drawing. However, when the xref drawing is converted, the objects only know about viewports from their own drawing. If the same display configuration is not used in both drawings, the graphic output may be different when converted to AutoCAD primitives.

For example, if the xref drawing has only a single viewport that shows the plan representation, but both plan and model representations are used in the host file, exploding the files separately gives you only the plan representation in the final file. If the xref drawings have multiple representations, you need to clear one or more xref viewport layers in the host drawing to get the appropriate representations in each viewport.