Would you like to know in which drawings a specific file is used as an xref? Let’s say that you’re editing a drawing and you’re pretty sure that it’s used as an xref in some other drawings. Changing the drawing will change these other drawings, too.
Mai Ezzat of Egypt sent in this tip to solve this problem.
- Open the DesignCenter and click the Search
button. - From the Look For drop-down list, choose Xrefs.
- From the In drop-down list, choose a location.
- In the Search for the Name text box, enter the name of the xref. You can use wildcards; for example ab19*. If you’re really ambitious, you can just put * to search for all the xrefs on your computer or network.
- Click Search Now.
The results shows all the drawings that contain that drawing (or those drawings) as xrefs, as you can see here.
Mai Ezzat notes that you can click any column name to sort by that column, so you can easily sort by either the xref files or by the host drawings.
Ellen Finkelstein is the author of the best-selling AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT Bible, which started with R14. Ellen has written extensively on AutoCAD, including articles for Autodesk’s website and features for AutoCAD’s Help system. Ellen’s first book was AutoCAD For Dummies Quick Reference.
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Great! Nice thing to know if one is in a rush.