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Importing DWG: Scale and xrefs


First Draft

Question

I thought I was able to import a large DWG file successfully but now realize that the scale is half of what it should be. Also, all of the layers in the cross-referenced files are grouped into a class entitled "xref", so visibility is all or nothing.

How can I deal with these two problems? And at the risk of revealing my ignorance, why would one want the scale in a design layer to be anything but 1:1?

Help appreciated, as always.

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The VectorWorks approach instead asks why not draft in scale, if that's the eventual output.

There are a few reasons why you want to try to draft to a scale, mainly because certain objects have a hard time scaling later down the road.

It's best to start to draft at a scale that will eventually be used for printing purposes, or get somewhere close.

This also eliminates the need for zooming out to excessive values, losing accuracy, and a few other issues.

If you haven't drawn anything in the file since importing the DWG, simply reimport the model into a new document. If that's not the case, you may want to delete the DWG specific items, and try the import again. I suggest importing into a new, blank document, then copy over the data you need to the "working drawing".

If it's only a few objects, and you know the factor the objects sizes are off by, simply select just those objects and use the "Scale Objects" command to appropriately adjust their size. Be sure not to checkmark "Scale entire drawing", otherwise all the actual size drawing pieces will too be scaled.

The xref is a matter of how the file was structured by the ACAD user. The components inside the xref should be classed (layers in ACAD) in addition to just be stuffed into the xref class. If that's truly the case, there's little that can be done by way of automation. You would have to select the various objects and move them to appropriate classes.

When you imported the file - did you simply import the single file, or did you use batch import to import a suite of files making up this entire project?

If you simply used one file, it sounds like the ACAD file had all the xref's binded to the file, which will also cause this. With VW 12 this is not necessary since the batch dwg/dxf import will find xrefs, as long as the files exist in a folder AND you have been sent the entire folder of files.

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Thanks to both you and Jonathan for addressing my scale question. It's resolved.

Regarding xrefs, originally I did import a single file but made sure the two associated XREFs were in the same folder.

To compare, I tried a batch import of the folder containing the main ACAD file with the two associated XREFs, and the objects from the referenced file are still classed together. Either way, I'm unable to select any of the individual objects in the xref class to assign them to a new class in VW so I can control their visibility.

Thanks again for your additional insights.

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