Power of the Triad—Effectively Manage Xref and Xref Layer Property Overrides in AutoCAD

NABAYAN ROY: I'm Nabayan Roy. I'm a product owner and principal learning experience designer with the AutoCAD team. And I have my colleague, Karen Mason. And she is the principle user experience designer. And we both work for the same team.

KAREN MASON: Good morning, everyone.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

NABAYAN ROY: So how has been the [INAUDIBLE] so far?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KAREN MASON: Last day.

NABAYAN ROY: Last day? OK. So today, the whole class is all about how to effectively manage your xref layer property overrides. So that's the whole-- [? the hero ?] of this topic or the class.

And just to give a quick summary, is today we'll learn-- this is an instructional class-- so we'll go through some procedural tasks to help you understand how you can effectively manage your xref layer properties by using these three system variables that we have in AutoCAD now, the VISRETAIN, the XREFOVERRIDE, and the VISRETAINMODE. The VISRETAINMODE is the latest kid on the block. If you are already on 2018.1, you would have used that sysvar.

The other section, we will also touch upon some of the smart new enhancements that we have done to the xref feature in AutoCAD that primarily helps you to fix your broken references almost automatically. And that goes a long way to boost your productivity.

So those are the two major sections. And the way this whole class is set up is we'll go with each-- after we're done with talking about one section, we'll have a demo where Karen would show you how to do that task. So after each demo, we'll proceed to the next sections. And for your questions, we'll take it at the end of the class.

So some of the key learning objectives, hopefully, by the end of this class, you would have learned something, something about how to manage your xref layer overrides if that has been a challenge for you, managing them in your xrefs, and also learn about some of the new features that we have developed for xrefs, how the smart configurations can help your productivity in the Xref Manager.

Also you can now easily see in your Layer Manager like what's your xref overrides. So it's very intuitive. So we'll cover all that. And hopefully, you will get to learn something new today.

So who are you? You are our users. And you are our biggest inspirations because we hear from you, and we build the next best AutoCAD. So some of you are power users of AutoCAD here, probably been using it for decades. And you are just here to learn some tips or tricks or something new.

Or maybe you are just using-- started using AutoCAD, like an intermediate user, want to know how you can manage xref layer properties and take something from this session. And the last one is you just fell in love with that title that I had for my class and just thought, oh, this something different-- very unlike-- is there something really technical about it? But, yeah. We love to tell stories.

So guys, sit back. The next 45 minutes, we'll take you through roller coaster ride. So less of downs, more of ups, probably. And hopefully, we both have an interactive session. And you all will enjoy and learn something.

So to set the context of this whole class, just a quick recap about xrefs. Now we all know external references are one of the most commonly used objects in AutoCAD. And there are multiple reasons why drafters use xrefs. And there are multiple benefits of you. It helps to keep your file size down. Because they are links, you don't bloat your file. You need to just update your reference files and your host drawings are all updated and current every time you reload your xrefs.

So in a way you see if xrefs, I can probably say, they are a special kind of blocks. They're very similar to blocks. But the good thing about xrefs is you just need to update it in your source files, and wherever you have used your reference files, they are all up-to-date. So that's the beauty of using xrefs in your drawing. So that's about xrefs. I just wanted to set the context because we will be talking about layer properties, xref layer properties.

So just to get a quick recap. Everyone must have used it, seen this. This is the File Reference Pane. This is the Details Pane. A lot of people might have overlooked-- I don't know-- there is something called as a Tree View here.

This Tree View is very helpful if you are using nested references in your drawing. It nicely shows you the whole nesting in your drawing to really understand why a [? detach ?] doesn't work or you have those different statuses in your drawing of Unreferenced and Orphan, and what's the real difference about an Unreferenced versus an Orphan? So those that you switch between the List View and the Tree View, you get more in-depth thing about why these things are occurring in my drawings and how you need to go about it.

So as I was saying about the beauty of xrefs is you-- whenever you update or any updates happen in the source files, you automatically get a notification in your status bar. Now you have that XREFNOTIFY sysvar. You can set it to 0, 1, or 2. So 0 is no notifications. But between 1 and 2, the 1 would probably just show you that icon with the red mark. But if you set it to 2, it gives you that bubble notification.

So that essentially helps you to tell you that there is a change in your xref files. You need to update or reload your xrefs. And how you do that? You typically do it on the palette. Right click it. Do a reload.

But at this point, Karen has a nice tip. If folks don't know it yet, you can do this. It's a dash XREF slash Reload slash asterisk. So if you are a command-line user, heavy command-line users, you don't need to go to the UI to reload it. Just type this and your xrefs would be reloaded. So this was setting the context of the whole boundary around which we will talk today in our class.

So the next section is xref layer control. So that's the hero of my story. We all have challenges. We know it's sometimes really challenging to manage the xref layer property overrides we-- like drafters who are working. They make changes in the host drawing layers and then their xref layers. And retaining them, managing them, it's been a challenge all this time.

But today, we want to tell you how you can really go about this by using these three system variables effectively in a smart way to do the selective thing of what you want to reload and what you want to always sync from your source files.

So these are the three system variables I've been talking about. The first one was introduced way back, way back before I started using AutoCAD. It was '12. And that's one of the oldest sysvars that was there. XREFOVERRIDE was introduced in AutoCAD 2016. And the latest one is VISRETAINMODE. It was just introduced in the 2018.1 update. So how many users are on 2018 or 2018.1? So there-- pardon?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

NABAYAN ROY: Oh, yeah. Things are improving. There are lots of improvements, both in performance and features, featurewise. So, yeah. So the 2018 and the 2018.1 has some more magic in it. You can upgrade, and you will realize and know about this magics.

So VISRETAIN. So what VISRETAIN does, basically, it controls the properties of xref-dependent layers. It has two values, 0 and 1. And the default value is always set to 1.

KAREN MASON: It is now. When it was first introduced, it was set to 0.

NABAYAN ROY: Set to 0, right. Yeah. It's set to 1. So as I spoke earlier, like this is a section that we introduced about VISRETAIN and how you can use VISRETAIN effectively in your work to manage your xref-dependent layers. So we will go about this task, like Karen will show you a demo how you can use these sysvars in your drawings. So let's take a look.

KAREN MASON: So in this drawing, I've got VISRETAIN set to 0. That was the original default for many years. And this sysvar is saved in the drawing. So it's possible, you might even have some old drawings that were created way back when that it's still set at VISRETAIN 0.

And the behavior of that is if I go into my Layer Dialog-- not so good.

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah. These things are-- that's AutoCAD. Sometimes it happens.

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

KAREN MASON: Oh, man. In my former life, at Autodesk, I was a QA tester. And I can break AutoCAD very easy. I've actually never seen this bug.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

NABAYAN ROY: Yep. OK. So maybe, Karen, you want to move that palette to your left side? Oh, OK. So by the time when Karen restarts her AutoCAD, you know. We all love to restart AutoCAD.

KAREN MASON: [LAUGHS]

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah. It happens couple of times, you know?

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah.

KAREN MASON: Actually, show of hands.

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah.

KAREN MASON: Has anybody seen that bug before? Because I've never seen that.

AUDIENCE: Normally, it happens when [INAUDIBLE].

NABAYAN ROY: Oh, OK. Yeah. So it's not hardware-friendly probably. So all the presentation stuff and exercises that we have in the class, like we'll go through a whole list exercises, they're all uploaded on the class site. So if you have not already downloaded the handouts and the presentation, it has a bunch of instructions and procedural tasks of how to do all these things. You can go anytime and download them.

There are some things that you will find in AutoCAD Help. But there are a bunch of things which are not there in Help.

KAREN MASON: OK. Well, thankfully restarting. Fixed it. So we're back in business. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to change all of the xref layers in this drawing to a different color. So I'm going to change everything to 8, which is a great color.

And then you'll notice out in the drawing, most things in this drawing have changed. There's a few that haven't. See the red tables, some red circles here, and a couple of green double doors. That's because those objects were using a color property of green or red as opposed to ByLayer. We'll get to that later.

But what I want to show you right now is the VISRETAIN equals 0 behavior. If I open up the xref drawing and in this drawing, I change all-- you know what? I don't actually need to change the layers here. But you see what the xref layers are in the actual xref file, they're a variation of magenta and green and cyan and stuff.

Back in the host drawing, I've overwritten all the layer properties. Yeah. I'm having fun with this video card. There we go. When I reload the xref now, with VISRETAIN set to 0, it means that it's going to discard any of the overrides that I have made. Now if I change VISRETAIN to 1-- and there's a UI for this-- now, in the Enhanced Layer Settings dialog, these are the two settings for VISRETAIN.

VISRETAIN 1 means that I want to retain any overrides that I made to the xref layer properties. And so now this time, if I change all of the xref layers to a different color, like 8, and then I reload the xref, now it's going to ignore all those layer changes that are present in the xref file.

Like in the actual xref file, all the layer colors were various colors. But I had overwritten them in my host drawing. And so when I reload the xref, the only thing that would change would be if I had actually made some geometry changes like added some doors, removed some furniture. So now when I reload, nothing happens because all of my xref layer overrides are maintained.

NABAYAN ROY: OK. So thanks, Karen. So this is how you use the first of the sysvars, VISRETAIN. But as you see, or if you have not noticed, there are some issues, like there is only two values. Either you load or do not load. Like there is no selective I want you to just do this or these properties to load and these properties. I want to keep my overrides in the host drawing. So that has been a challenge.

So the next sysvar that we introduced was XREFOVERRIDE. This came in around AutoCAD 2016. And basically, what it does, it basically controls the display of the object properties on reference layers. And this is set to 0. The value, the default value, is set to 0.

The other thing I missed saying about VISRETAIN is both VISRETAIN and XREFOVERRIDE are set in the drawings. They are drawing-specific sysvars. And they change. For every drawing, you need to set them.

So how do you go about-- what, basically, XREFOVERRIDE override does is if you have an object that you have not set to ByLayer, like you have set it by some other object properties, like, let's say, color. And when you go to your host drawing and you have to make a change, that doesn't happen because it's not set to ByLayer in the default.

But now when you use the XREFOVERRIDE, it just assumes that everything is set to ByLayer. So it doesn't matter what it was originally set in your host drawing. When you bring it in your source files, when you bring it in your current drawing where it's xref and you use the XREFOVERRIDE in conjunction with the VISRETAIN sysvar, it works as if everything is set to ByLayer.

And it really helps solve a lot of issues. Otherwise, you have to pick every object and change. It takes a lot of time. It's just too time consuming and cumbersome. And we will see a demo how you can do this task to change xref layer colors which are not set to ByLayer.

KAREN MASON: So if you recall, I was showing you with this drawing before that I had set all of the xref layers to 8. But there were a few objects that didn't change. And now with the magic of this XREFOVERRIDE system variable, take a look at the red circles and the red table and the couple of green double doors when I change xref override to 1.

Now magically, they act as if that xref drawing had been authored using a color property of ByLayer. And I'm just going to Undo and show that to you one more time because I know it's a fast change. So once again, setting it to 0 means that we honor the xref--

NABAYAN ROY: Layers.

KAREN MASON: --property settings. But setting it to 1, it now behaves as if the xref had its object properties set to ByLayer. We added that system variable in 2016. But in 2018.1, now there's a UI for it. So in the Layer Settings dialog, this is called Treat Xref Object Properties as ByLayer.

And as Nabayan said, they're saved in the drawing. That little symbol in front of any options in this dialog or in the Options dialog indicates that that's a setting that saved in the drawing.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. And if we can just keep this dialog. Just want to put that point is those who are using prior to 2018.1 are-- some of these settings, especially the VISRETAIN, they were in the Options dialog. And so it was like kind of spread.

So now we have brought all of them into the Layer Settings dialog, like you can set the VISRETAIN, the XREFOVERRIDE right from just one place. So the sysvars that usually help you to control the visual properties, like xref or xref-dependent, they're all there. So you don't have to hunt about each of these in the UI and where are they. Of course, you can set all of these from the command line as well.

AUDIENCE: What happens if you're working with something [INAUDIBLE]?

NABAYAN ROY: OK. So can we just park this question for now? Yeah. I know, because we have a lot of content here. So I'm going to keep in mind this question. And we'll definitely come back to it just before we finish. So thanks, Tatiana.

So this is the new kid on the block. And it gives the real power to the two sysvars that we have discussed so far, the VISRETAIN and the XREFOVERRIDE. And if you have noticed in Karen's demo, when she was doing VISRETAIN and I spoke about it, when you were toggling between 0 and 1, you were making a choice whether you want to either get all the properties synced or reloaded. And it overrides whatever overrides you did in your host drawing, they are gone.

So there was no way you can do a selective thing. And we know that in the real world, it doesn't work like that. People want to keep some overrides in the host drawing or current drawing. But they want to reload or sync to the xref-dependent layer properties every time.

So how do we do that? And that's the answer. VISRETAINMODE is the answer to how to selectively go about it. So the first task that Karen will demo in AutoCAD 2018.1-- this is in 2018.1-- is how to selectively now retain-- now you are able to selectively retain the xref layer property overrides. And just before Karen switches, take a look or pay attention to this top portion on the right-hand side where all this magic happens Yeah.

KAREN MASON: Waiting for me?

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah.

KAREN MASON: OK. So I've taken this drawing. And I've reset everything back to the original layer properties. And I'm going to bring up the--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHTER]

KAREN MASON: Nice.

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah.

KAREN MASON: Oh. I'm on fire today, finding the bugs.

NABAYAN ROY: Yeah. Everybody needs a break. AutoCAD needs it too frequently. But we do need like, you know?

KAREN MASON: All right. So I'm going to bring up the Layer Settings dialog. And this is the UI related to VISRETAINMODE. And we call it Xref layer properties to reload, except overrides. So what this means is the bad part about VISRETAIN 0 and 1 was it was like all or nothing. So when you had it set to 0, it meant that you weren't retaining any overrides that you made to those xref layer properties.

Every time you opened up the drawing or reloaded the xref, you would always bring in the properties from the xref drawing. And with VISRETAIN set to 1, now it was a snapshot in time. Like you attached that xref, and all the layer properties would be stuck in that setting. So even if you made some changes to your xref drawing, it wouldn't be reflected in the host drawing.

So the beauty of VISRETAINMODE is now you can have your cake and eat it too. Because you can attach that xref, have VISRETAIN set to 1. That means that you want to maintain any changes that you make to some particular layers. But for other layers that you haven't touched, you want that those layer properties to be synced up with the xref.

So in this case, I'm going to turn this on. And I'm going to say, yeah, I want the color, the line type and the line weight to reload when I make some changes. And then in the Layer dialog, I'm going to just make some changes here to the E-F-DOOR layer. I'm going to change the color to red. I'm going to change the line type to ISO dash. And I'm going to change the line weight to 0.5.

And you can see, out in the drawing, that the objects on that layer, all the doors-- and I also had these circles in the table on that door layer-- now they show as a fat, red, dashed look.

Now I'm going to go to the xref drawing. And I'm going to open up the Layer dialog. And I'm going to change-- just for the purposes of showing off big changes-- I'm going to change all of the xref layers to green. I'm going to change the line type to the ISO dashed. I'll change the line weight to 0.13. And I'm going to change the transparency to 50. And then I'm going to save this drawing. Now when I go back to the host drawing, there'll be a little notification there for me to reload the xref.

Now in previous releases, before VISRETAINMODE was introduced, nothing would happen when I would reload this xref because VISRETAIN 1 means just keep my xref layers exactly the way I have set them in the host drawing. Never go back to the source file to see what changes have been made.

But now, with the VISRETAINMODE, it's basically saying, alter the behavior of VISRETAIN 1. So now when I reload, all of the xref layers, except for the one that I had made some overrides to, are now changed to the changes that I made in the xref drawing, the green and the dash. But the E-F-DOOR layer that I had changed, that remains.

And then there's a little status icon here and a tool tip to indicate the overrides that are set on that layer.

NABAYAN ROY: All right. [INAUDIBLE].

KAREN MASON: And I could-- I don't need to undo it. Yep.

NABAYAN ROY: Maybe, so just want to add this point. I want to tell the VISRETAINMODE sysvar is a bitcode sysvar. Like people who are familiar with how bitcode sysvars work in AutoCAD, so you can use the command line now. So now based on what Karen selected previously, color, line type, line weight, that value adds up to 368.

But you can choose your value based on-- if you refer to AutoCAD Help, all the layer object properties have a value. And you can just check whatever, either from the UI. But if you are not a fan of doing things from UI and more of a command-line person, you can just use the VISRETAINMODE, enter a new value here, and you will see that it syncs up. Whatever change you make here, the UI gets updated with the checkboxes.

So we have given you the best of both worlds. Either you do it from UI. The reason is because if you see, the VISRETAINMODE is a bit complex. It takes a little while to understand how this thing really works in conjunction with the VISRETAIN sysvar. So you can either use command line, if you are really good at it. But if you really want to get started understanding it, use the UI.

KAREN MASON: Yeah. I mean, you could go to the Help and add up all the bitcodes to figure out what setting that you want. In this case, I know that the previous setting was 368. So I could set it here at the command line and then open up the Settings dialog and see it's back to just those three that I had checked earlier.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. OK. So the next thing we'll see the task that we want to show you with VISRETAINMODE, what we have now done is in your Layer manager, it was very difficult to see your-- it's not that intuitive enough to really see, oh, this is an xref override. How do you make-- there are some of the status icons that Karen was showing.

But we have made a smart way. People who have been using the viewport overrides, there is a way you can visually see and tell this is a viewport override. So in the same way, now in the UI, there is something for the xref override background color.

So now you can set your xref overrides to a certain color to really make it easy to understand for anyone. Like, you know, that, oh, this is a viewport override. And this is an xref override. So they are different. And we have made it easy now on the UI as well. So Karen, you want to show how it's done?

KAREN MASON: Yeah. So if anybody's used viewport overrides before, we highlight any layers that had viewport overrides. And we also had a Tooltip. The ability to set xref overrides has been in the product pretty much since xrefs were introduced. But you had no way of knowing it. Like if I had just opened up this drawing, I have no idea-- I would have in the past-- I would have had no idea whether or not all these layers being green, does that mean that I have changed it in this host file? Or does that mean that the actual color in the xref file itself is green?

But now because of these different status icons, I can easily see that the only one that has an override is this layer. And we've got this little toggle now to toggle on the highlighting. And this is the same highlighting that we have displayed for some time for viewport overrides.

By default, both of these viewport override-- the highlighting background color-- or the xref override background color are the same. Previously, I had changed it to magenta. But the default is them being the same.

And the reason why we turned it off by default is because if I made-- like earlier, I had changed all the xref layers to gray. This highlighting can become a little overwhelming in your Layer dialog. So with this quick toggle, if you don't want to see the highlighting all the time but you just quickly want to toggle it on and off because it really drives home which xref layers have overrides.

These status icons would give you the same indication. But the highlighting makes it super clear, especially for the individual properties rather than having to hover over the Tooltip and see, oh, OK. That layer has an override. But it's just a color. The highlighting makes it a little bit faster to figure that out.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. So the next one of-- we can keep this screen on. And the next task, we'll show you, like now you have done your overrides and everything, use the VISRETAINMODE sysvar. Now how quickly you can reset your xref overrides now? There was no easy way. You can easily reset your viewport overrides. Everybody knows how to do that. But now, you can have that same thing for xref overrides.

Now you can now from the UI on the Contextual menu, you can now reset your xref overrides. And Karen will show you how easy it is. It makes life so simple.

KAREN MASON: Yeah. There's actually a number of different ways that you can do it. The fastest one is right from the-- we've got a new filter where you can see all of the xref layers that have overrides. See, when I'm looking at All, there's quite a few more layers that don't have any overrides. And the filter here has just the layers that have overrides.

And you can just Right click, Reset. And then you can choose, well, do I want to reset all the properties or just specific properties? In this case, I'll do them all. And I'll switch back to the All. And then you can see now all the xref layers have been reset. And so the status icon doesn't show that it's got an override anymore. If I turn on the override highlighting, nothing is highlighted anymore. So now it's saying there are no overrides.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. OK. So the other thing which we also did-- and I think Karen briefly touched upon it-- is there are multiple ways to quickly understand about the overrides. One is the background color, definitely. But as Karen said, a few of us don't like to use so much of colors because it can be overwhelming. And there are subtle ways to make you understand, like, OK, so now we have different status icons for different overrides. So if there's just a viewport overrides that the status icon is different versus if there's only an xref override versus both, like an xref and a viewport override.

So now those different status icons clearly tell you what type of override you have in your drawing. So do we want to--

KAREN MASON: Let's switch back to your slide.

NABAYAN ROY: Oh, OK. So, yeah. So now if you see in this-- this is a xref override only status icon, whereas this one is both-- it has a viewport and an xref override. So now the status icons clearly tells you what the status icon symbolizes in your drawing. OK. So do we want to-- you have already showed this.

KAREN MASON: I kind of already showed the status icons.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. Yeah. So this is the coming to the end of this section about the VISRETAINMODE is-- now we have introduced a new default for all your xrefs. Now there is an XREFLAYER, a default layer, which it's a sysvar. And you can use [? dot ?] or can use any name as whatever you want to name it. Like I named it xrefs-- oops. OK. I named it xref here.

So now you can keep all your xrefs to a specific layer instead of putting them on, by default, on 0 or some other layer. Just like if you have used DIMLAYER or hatch layer, so now you have this new XREFLAYER as a default for all your xrefs. So you want to--

KAREN MASON: So I'm going to switch to a new drawing. Doesn't have any layers in it. And I'm going to type in XREFLAYER. And the default is either a dot or use current. And what that means is that it's the same as your old behavior of-- whatever your current layer is, that's what layer the xref would get attached on.

For people who have discovered some other similar system variables that we have for dimensions and hatches, we've got a DIMLAYER and a hatch layer. That means that you can say, oh, I always want my dimensions to go on the dimension layer. Or I always want my hatches to go on the hatch layer. So when you create those type of objects, you don't have to go and switch your current layer, draw your dimension, and then switch your layer back. So we basically just added that same kind of the thing for xrefs.

And I'm going to type in here this xref. And what you notice is I actually haven't created a layer called xref. All I've done is said when I do attach an xref, I want it to use the xref layer. And it'll automatically create it. So I'm going to do Right click and Attach drawing.

And then you see that as I created that xref or attached that xref, it automatically created an xref layer and put the xref on it. So if I select this xref, you see that the layer is set to xref.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KAREN MASON: Excuse me?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KAREN MASON: Yes, yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

NABAYAN ROY: Yep.

KAREN MASON: And that setting is saved in the drawing. So that would be something you would probably want to put in your template.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. And one thing we didn't tell you about, like we told you about the VISRETAIN and the XREFOVERRIDE, they are drawing-specific. But the VISRETAIN is a registry setting. So there is reason for keeping it on a registry because you don't have to do it again and again for [INAUDIBLE]. It's registry unless you change the profile. That's different.

KAREN MASON: Yeah. I mean, if you like this idea of I want my XREFLAYER properties to update as I make changes in the source, you don't have to go and open up every one of your drawings and change your VISRETAIN setting. Just leave that set to 1. Just in one place change VISRETAINMODE, and then it'll act now on all of the drawings in your projects.

AUDIENCE: What was her question?

KAREN MASON: She asked, can you use existing layers for the XREFLAYER system variable?

NABAYAN ROY: And this is just like a compilation of best practice that you can take like the [? hatch ?] when using these three in a combination, [? which ?] values you can choose for the best optimal experience of it, of these three sysvars.

So with this, we come to an end. We have not come to an end of the class. We have come to an end of the section which was primarily focused on the xref layers. And at the beginning, I also told you about we'll show you some of the new magic that has been introduced in the xref feature itself, some really smart configurations that has been put into-- that really helps your productivity. And I quickly go over it before we start taking the questions that everyone has on their mind.

So I'm going to switch to my AutoCAD. So if you have noticed here, I have a drawing. And I've-- no. That's-- I need to exit. OK. Great.

So I have a drawing, a new drawing. And now I have attached a couple of xrefs. Now can someone tell me any difference from the current experience that you're used to using xrefs? Like what happens when you attach an xref typically? What is the kind of part you give by default? OK.

So previously, it used to be a full path, like this for whenever you attached an xref. And that's been one of the biggest cause which causes broken references. Now when you have to bring your work home or bring it back, it's hardcoded, you end up with broken references.

Now this is a new file. It's not saved yet. I have attached two xrefs. You see this little asterisk here? What it's telling me is now we have introduced a new sysvar, xref path. So the default value, whenever you now attach an xref is relative. You can change that default value based on full path or no path. But now the default is a relative.

Now what's happening right now is previously, you can not save or attach an xref and give a relative path unless you have saved the drawing. Now the magic is I have not saved the drawing. I have actually attached, let's say-- I'll show it again. Let me attach this. And let me do it.

So you saw that the part was relative. But now, when I save this drawing-- let's say I'm saving this drawing as-- you see this one? This is automatically now set to relative path. I can [INAUDIBLE] this. I'll quickly detach them. Oops, sorry.

KAREN MASON: But before 2018--

NABAYAN ROY: You see this is a reference path.

KAREN MASON: --whenever you attached an xref, it would just use the last path type that you had set. And so a lot of people set their path type to relative. But the problem was when you created a brand new drawing, we couldn't save it as a relative path. You've probably seen the error that says we can't set it to relative. And so it'll set it to full.

And so then now the next time you go to attach an xref, even if you're in a saved drawing, it was still left at full. So that is not the case anymore. There is a system variable. So if you'd like it to be set to full or you'd like it to be set to relative or no, you change the REFPATHTYPE system variable, R-E-F path type.

NABAYAN ROY: So now--

KAREN MASON: And then it'll always use that setting for relative path even in a brand new, unsaved file. It like kind of cues it up. Like that little asterisk there let it know that, OK, right now, it says it's the full path. But as soon as you save that file, it'll switch it to relative.

NABAYAN ROY: Yep. So now what I'll do is I'll-- I have this now. Usually, I'll go to that-- I'll create a new folder. Name it Nested just for say-- I'll move this. So I just moved the drawings. I'm going to reopen my drawing. So now it says open. This is the common dialog that you would have encountered.

Now if you see that we have changed, it used to be unreferenced, which didn't make sense. Now if you'll notice this one, it says Not Found. So two references are not found. I opened the External Reference palette. I select one of the reference files. On the Right click, there is a new menu called Select New Path. Now what it does, it allows you to navigate to the new path. And let me put that here.

And now if you observe what happens, this is the magic. Now it's telling you that there are a bunch of other reference in your drawing. Do you want to update them all? So in essence, you are fixing just one. And AutoCAD fixes all.

So if I say, yes, look at what happens. It loads. And this is just very hypothetical case. Like you know in real world, [? there ?] are hundreds of xrefs? Imagine how much time it's really saving for your drawing. So that's one of the new features. I was talking like fix one, fix all.

I'll quickly show another feature. I'll save this file to, let's say, another location somewhere.

KAREN MASON: So this drawing has been saved with-- it would need to be saved with absolute paths?

NABAYAN ROY: No. This should work. So I just saved this--

KAREN MASON: Oh, yeah. Relative.

NABAYAN ROY: I just saved this here now. Look at that. So now then every time you are saving your host drawing to another directory-- which is very common, you move things-- it takes care of all those xrefs that are with relative paths. And it asks you, do you want to update those relative paths? So no more work for you. We are taking care-- not we. AutoCAD is taking care of doing.

So AutoCAD is really becoming smarter with each day. So we are hearing, listening to you. These are the small things that we believe really helps save time. So I did that. I go back. And everything's fine.

The other thing, if you have noticed, is Find and Replace. Now all the classic users, like who have been using xref for a long time, we have an External Reference Manager. We don't say "external," right? We just say a "Reference Manager." And the Reference Manager had this nice function called Find and Replace.

So what Find and Replace does is now you have a bunch of xrefs which have been broken. Now you want to assign a new path. So you can just do-- I'm not going to show this. Now this was your original path. Now you can replace it with a new path. And add all of your broken references will be fixed.

So that feature is not new. It was there in the Reference Manager, which is a utility in your-- not within AutoCAD-- but in your Start Menu utilities. But now that function, we have brought it within the External Reference Manager. So that's another enhancement that goes to help boost your productivity.

KAREN MASON: A common use case for using Find and Replace would be like if you had been using full paths for your references and let's just say you had everything on the M drive and now you were changing everything to the P drive. You could use Find and Replace and swap out all the M colons with a P colon and fix all your like--

AUDIENCE: What if you rename your file?

KAREN MASON: It's not for renaming the file. It's only the locations.

NABAYAN ROY: Right. We understand the renaming is an issue because AutoCAD reads the file. It doesn't associate any metadata or the two IDs with the file. And that's why.

With that, it brings us to the end of our class. And I need to put this mandatory slide. And if you folks have liked our class, please, I would appreciate if you can take two minutes of your time, go to the mobile app, and put the survey. If you thing it didn't meet your expectations, still go and give your feedback. It helps us improve the next time. So any questions you have, please-- yep.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] attach [INAUDIBLE]?

NABAYAN ROY: Oh.

KAREN MASON: I didn't hear. I can't hear.

NABAYAN ROY: He's saying, attach or overlay, which one does this feature works on, the xref--

KAREN MASON: Oh. It's--

AUDIENCE: I only ask that because some firms that I've worked at, you could totally attach. Other firms, [INAUDIBLE].

NABAYAN ROY: So--

KAREN MASON: Are you asking--

NABAYAN ROY: --which is [INAUDIBLE] recommendation?

KAREN MASON: --which one is recommended? Or do these [INAUDIBLE]--

AUDIENCE: All yours were attached.

NABAYAN ROY: Right.

AUDIENCE: One firm that I worked at [INAUDIBLE].

KAREN MASON: Yeah. I think it's personal preference. But it depends on your business condition. But these features will work with both the attach or overlay type.

AUDIENCE: One's not right and one's wrong? [INAUDIBLE].

KAREN MASON: No. No, there's reasons for doing it overlay or attach. It's not a right or wrong. It depends on--

NABAYAN ROY: How your organization uses. Like there is a little, subtle difference between the attach versus overlays. Overlays does go to just one level of nested. Attachments just brings every nested thing into your drawing so you are loading your drawings. So there's some little, fundamental difference between how you use it. We don't [? then ?] recommend any specific thing. But, yeah.

AUDIENCE: You had recommended or mentioned the system variable for [INAUDIBLE]. What is that?

KAREN MASON: DIMLAYER.

NABAYAN ROY: DIMLAYER and hatch layer. Those are the two default for dimensions and hatches, similar to [? dot. ?] We reintroduce the XREFLAYER in 2018.01--

KAREN MASON: Yeah.

NABAYAN ROY: --which is for your xrefs.

KAREN MASON: Yeah. And if you use center marks and center lines, there's also one for that called CENTERLAYER. Those are the four layer-related system variables for AutoCAD automatically putting those objects on a specific layer.