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Browse All TopicsWe have a customer who we are migrating to SBS 2008 this weekend. I know that AutoCad XREF's work on a UNC path, with the migration the server name will change. Does anyone know a way to do a batch change on all of the machines so we can point the XREF at a mapped network drive? This means that AutoCad will not see any difference before or after the install.
If someone could explain how this is configured as will this would be great.
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Others have reccomended the reference manager - which is probably the best tool to use if you really do need to change lots of xrefs. But, AutoCAD XRefs do not necessarily use UNC paths. They can, but they typically just use the mapped drive. Users can also opt to save relative paths, or not pathing information at all.
If the users were using mapped drives, and the mapped drive path is the same on the new server, you should not have an issue, Autocad will resolve these fine.
Also note that if the xref is not where it was expected, autocad will search for it in a few places, including subfolders of the expected location.
Referance manager as other suggested is likely the best option to give you a good assesment of what's been used.
Depending on the number of files, folder structures, referance type used (full,relative,none) unresolved xrefs, nesting levels, file corruption, missing reference files, etc.this could be a very time consuming task.
When I've implemented data management systems, I'd frequently find that most users' data is a mess, especially if they have a lot of legady data that's been around for some time.
I'd make a copy of their data to play with ASAP for a preliminary assesment as you might find your time frame is not possible...or it's a slam dunk...depends on the scope. Just don't expect refertance manager to save you if you have half a million files over the last 20 years in various states of integrity without haveing several people work none-stop for days on multiple systems.
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by: terjegunPosted on 2009-10-20 at 08:00:23ID: 25614855
There is a program called Autodesk Reference Manager that can change the Xref paths on a a batch of drawings. This utility comes with Autocad 2009 and 2010. I am not shure if it is included with AutoCAD 2008 ? The name of the programfile is AdRefMan.exe.