XREF — External References

Lists the external references of the drawing.

• Command: XREF · Global name: _XREF · Alias: XR
• Ribbon: Insert › Reference
• Ribbon: View › Palettes

Opens (or closes) the External References palette: all the external references of the drawing (DWG or DXF drawings, PDF underlays and raster images) with their status, and the buttons to attach, reload, unload, detach, bind or change the path of each one.

Usage

1. Enter XREF (or XR) or click the button.
2. At the top, Attach DWG… opens XATTACH, Attach PDF… opens PDFATTACH and Reload All References reads all of them again from disk.
3. Below, the tree of DWG references: each one with its nested references hanging from it, and the columns Reference Name, Status, Type (Attach or Overlay), Size, Date, Saved Path and Found At (the file that was read).
4. The buttons of each row: Reload, Unload, Detach, Bind and Change Path…. Nested references are managed from the one that contains them.
5. Further down, PDF Underlays (with their page) and Raster images, with their own buttons.

Reference status

• Loaded: it has been read and is drawn at each insert.
• Unloaded: it is still in the drawing, but it is not read or drawn.
• Not Found: the file is neither at the saved path nor in the drawing's folder.
• Unreferenced: it is defined, but not inserted anywhere.
• Needs reloading: the file has changed since it was read.
• Circular reference: not loaded, Network path: not loaded or Read error: it has not been loaded for that reason.

Notes

• The palette can be docked to the left or right of the drawing and set to auto-hide with the buttons in its header (◂ ▸ ◻ 📌); see The user interface.
• The buttons run -XREF, -IMAGE or the corresponding command, so everything can be undone with UNDO.
• When the file of a loaded reference changes on disk, the status bar warns about it (External references modified: …) with a Reload button.
• The date is shown in UTC.
• The content of references is never saved in this drawing: when it is saved they remain references, except those that are bound.

See also

XATTACH · -XREF · XCLIP · PDFATTACH · IMAGEATTACH · External references