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FYI: File names, XREFs, and AutoCAD

PostPosted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 2:11 pm
by Mark Toce
We recently discovered that AutoCAD does not seem to work well with XREFs that have commas in the file name.

If the name of the XREF drawing file contains a comma, AutoCAD will execute the "audit" command during file load and rename the XREF layers. This results in AutoCAD displaying all XREF layers instead of just the ones that were displayed when you exported the file from DataCAD.

If you plan to export a file to AutoCAD, and that file contains XREFs, we recommend that you avoid using commas in the file names.

Re: FYI: File names, XREFs, and AutoCAD

PostPosted: Fri May 05, 2023 12:21 pm
by Greg Frech
I am interested in converting my hundreds of DATAcad stock house plan sets, currently marketed on vendor sites, to AUTOcad format because it is so difficult to find drafting outsource support to do DATAcad modifications. A typical modification is changing a crawl space foundation to a slab, then convert the AUTOcad to PDF format to fill my orders that way. I wonder how this is going to succeed. Is that something that should work?

Re: FYI: File names, XREFs, and AutoCAD

PostPosted: Fri May 05, 2023 5:26 pm
by MtnArch
The short answer is "it should". The long answer will depend on how you have your drawings set up : do you use Xref's and Self-Xref's? Do you use a standard font that is common with Acad without any changes to the aspect? You'll need to set up an AutoCAD CTB file (pen table) to correctly plot; you'll also need to set up the color palette that translates from Dcad's colors to Acad's colors. Dcad's linetypes will *somewhat* translate to Acad via an SHX file that must be in the same directory as the DWG files, though you'll need to futz with the LTScale in Acad to get them to look close to what they look like in Dcad (but they will NOT be exactly the same). You'll have some pain working through the first one or two translations as you see what works and what doesn't.

Best of luck with the translations!