forum.datacad.com

Is there a way to set up my xrefs to a relative path rather than referencing the file location from the root directory? I know ACAD does this easily (literally the click of a radio button). This comes in VERY handy when moving file sets between folders.

Thanks

Have you tried opening the Tools pull-down menu/Program Preferences/pathnames tab and go to the Xref base path and click in the field and adjust as required?

Hi,
I wonder if you could expand on this a bit more. I'm using V22.00.02.00 SE on Windows 10. Typically, I only insert self xrefs to make the drawing process simpler. When a project has been completed, I move the drawings to other locations (external hard drive or web storage). The problem (OK, it is a good problem) is that the projects often come back for more work, i.e., changes, alterations, additions, etc. When I move the drawing file back to my working drive and open it I get the following message. "This drawing contains orphaned reference files." The self srefs are now gone. This isn't the end of my world - I can always re-enter them or work around this, but I wish it didn't happen.

If I understand the idea, I need to somehow change the xref base path, but I don't know how. What would need to be added? Or is there another way?

Thanks for all your help.

Joe Krawiec
Toms River, NJ

Hi Joe,
We do similar in moving project files to other fixed drives and portable backup drives and recreate the same file structure but with different drive letters depending which device is used and haven't had issues when moving files with self-xrefs back to the original working drive. The warning message about orphaned reference files could be referring to xrefs rather than self-xrefs? If you open the RFM on the working drive and check the paths to see if there are in fact any xrefs in lieu of self-xrefs. Our working drive and default file are set up to show Drawings\ in the XREF's Base Path with no drive letter at the start, whereas a number of other working folders have fixed drive letters at the start, ie. F:\ etc.

For archiving there's also the option of using File\Pak-N-Go feature with everything selected so that the PAK file captures every other file used in the working file. The last option is to use the old fashion ZIP or similar but this relies on the user to remember where all the support files are located that make up the master file. If all you've been doing is moving the entire project folder over to a different storage device I'm not sure why self-xrefs give you the message when you return the files back to the working folder.