AutoCAD Tip of the Day: XREF_XREF_XREF – What’s up with the Scale?
Posted By Mike Williams on January 13, 2009
AutoCAD Tip of the Day: XREF_XREF_XREF – What’s up with the Scale?Ahh, the feeling. We had just completed one of the biggest projects we’ve ever drafted and I was going to meet with the Architect with the final construction documents. I rolled them out with great pride. The drawings looked awesome.
While I was standing there, waiting for the accolades to pour in, he got that look on his face. You know the one that’s part confusion and part frustration. I looked down, and for the first time realized that everywhere on the sheet in place of the scale (which was an automatically updated field) was written XREF_XREF_XREF.
I almost died. Even worse, to my horror, I realized that was the case on almost every single sheet. His question was “how could you miss such an obvious error?” My question was, how the #@&&%# did it get there? We had just upgraded to AutoCAD Architecture 2008 and I was ready to permanently delete it off my hard drive.
The problem lies in nested XREFs, annotation scales and a bug in AutoCAD. Here are 3 ways to deal with the problem:
First of all, for a quick fix, you can type the command SCALELISTEDIT inside your drawing. A dialogue box will appear that shows all your scales. Select the Reset button and answer “yes” to restore to the defaults.
In some cases, the drawing may become unusable due to this problem. In that case you need to download the Scale List Cleanup Utility from Autodesk. You can find the file HERE. To install the downloaded utility, do the following (as per Autodesk):
Installation Instructions
To install the Scale List Cleanup Utility
You must have administrative privileges on your Microsoft® Windows® operating system to complete installation.
1. Based on your operating system (32-bit or 64-bit), download the appropriate self-extracting executable file.
2. Select a folder.
3. Extract files to the selected folder.
4. Navigate to the folder and copy CleanupScales.exe, CleanupScalesRes.dll, and CleanupScales.html to the installation directory of your AutoCAD-based product.
NOTE: To run this utility you must launch CleanupScales.exe from the installation directory of your AutoCAD-based product.
Make sure you read all of the instructions found in the “readme” file on the download page. This program will remove the excess scales in the drawing.
The last thing to mention is that Autodesk has addressed this problem in a service pack. You can download the latest Service Pack by visiting the AutoCAD Services and Support page HERE.
For 2008 and 2009 users, I’m sure you’ve found this solution already, but so many of our subscribers are still using older versions and are about to upgrade so I wanted to make sure to get it out there. I hope this tip saves you from the embarrassment that I experienced.
Mike
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About the author
Mike Williams
Michael E. Williams has been using AutoCAD since Release 2.1. He's been providing AutoCAD drafting, training and consulting to the Architectural, Industrial, and Engineering communities for over 20 years. Mike has trained entire drafting departments of a Fortune 500 companies and held classes and seminars for Architects, Engineers and Contractors. He's taken people with zero experience, training or knowledge of drafting, architecture or CAD and turned them into highly productive and knowledgeable drafting professionals. As owner and operator of Michael E. Williams Computer Graphics, he has personally drafted on thousands of projects for hundreds of clients. The tips and tricks he teaches come from personal experience and a pursuit of efficiency and productivity in a production environment. Mike lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana with his wife Tanya and their three girls (Alex, Kate and Eden).Comments
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That one is funny. It’s a SIMPLE THING but BIG MISTAKE
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This morning, I was researching about the related topic but couldn’t genuinely make it out. Kudos for this one.
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