Moving and storage of xrefs

[robynsmith]

I'm wondering about what the complications may be or things to be concerned about with regards to moving and storing xrefs that were created from outside of the company. We are in a position whereby we will receive xrefs from contractors which may be bound or unbound and our company is considering storing the unbound versions on the file server however I am concerned as to whether or not the links will be maintained if there is a move and how they should be stored. Also what particular requirements we may have to provide our contractors prior to submission for the unbound versions.

 

I'm also concerned about whether or not there needs to be a flat folder structure with all disciplines stored in the same place. I fear that the solution of putting them on the file server may not be quite as easy as I suspect that on receipt they may be placed in differing locations of which the references would need to be redirected.

 

Any advice is greatly appreciated

[Organic]

If you use relative path references you shouldn't have too much trouble.

 

See http://cadtips.cadalyst.com/import/xref-path-absolute-vs-relative

[RobDraw]

More information is needed to give you an ideal solution.

 

Are you at all familiar with the use of XREFs?

 

What is in these XREFs and how are you using these files?

 

Will you be getting updates to these drawings by means of the contractor sending you updated XREF files and not the base files?

 

If you will be having to deal with contractors sending you files with XREFs on a regular basis, I would get yourself familiar with the different types of pathing and their particulars. That link in Organic's post is very informative. How you handle them is going to depend on how much you and any other users that will have to deal with files are familiar with using them.

 

If you don't use XREF's on a regular basis and don't see any benefit from using them, I would just go ahead and bind them as they come in. (If the contractors are going to be updating the project with just the XREF's, you will need another solution.)

 

If these are not being used for anything other than reference, you could just dump all the files into one "flat" folder and AutoCAD will automagically find them not matter how they were set-up.