Workgroup References

[E&S - Shaun]

I have recently switched over to VectorWorks from AutoCad. In AutoCad I know that you can import an X-ref, move it around and when the source drawing changes it will update into the drawing that contains the reference. It appears that in VectorWorks the drawing goes back to its original coordinates when you perform an Update from all Command. I have also noticed that they will move sometimes when the referenced drawing has moved and needs to be relocated. My question is this, is there some way to tell where the 0,0 coordinate is in drawing so I can move all the referenced drawings to the same location? Or is there some super slick way of moving a Workgroup Reference around in the drawing without waiting for everything to unlock and then dragging it around?

Thank you in advance,

Shaun

[Petri Sakkinen]

The philosophical background of XREFs and WGR are different. The WGR mechanism often needs to be complemented by layer links, which you can move around. (And even duplicate - just unlock the beast first.)

In most cases there should not be a need to reset the origin of the coordinate system (well, in VW 9, that is) - but in case you want to fo it (and I can indeed think of several scenarios), the location of the origin is easily (?) determined with VectorScript:

PROCEDURE OriginCoords; { ? Petri Sakkinen 2002 }

VAR xo, yo : REAL;

BEGIN GETORIGIN(xo, yo); MESSAGE('x: ', xo, ' - y: ', yo); END;

RUN(OriginCoords);

With a little (??) bit of work you can perhaps write a script that writes the values into a text file and another one that moves everything in the other drawing by the same x/y values so you don't need to jot them down.

Now, the problem we still have is this:

If the origin has already been moved, we have no way of finding out what the PREVIOUS origin was. Maybe your script should in fact use two text files, compare the x/y values and move objects accordingly. Dunno - I'd rather establish a local coordinate system and stick to that.