W hat is a computer? I guess the easiest way I can explain it is as a little machine that follows very specific instructions over and over. A computer cannot learn and, unless told to do so, won’t respond to anything. Think of it as a very dumb dog that you have to teach to catch a ball every day and every time you want to play. Computers do very complex math. Mind you, it is always related to the basics: add, subtract, multiply and divide. But as anyone who has had algebra and calculus will tell you: if you do enough of these basics, you can get approximations of more sophisticated math that are pretty close to reality. Computers do this math very quickly. Often the secalculations are done in millions per second. Imagine multiplying 10 million pairs of multi-digit numbers per second. I have a hard enough time myself doing a 3-digitmultiplication in less than a minute. Computers can store a vast amount of information and retrieve it at extraordinary speeds. When everything work...
Binding Xrefs On occasion, you will want to permanently attach an Xref to the host drawing. If you send your drawing files to a printing service to be plotted, including a set of Xref files can complicate things. Also, for archiving finished work, it’s better to reduce the number of files. There may also be occasions when the Xref has been revised for the last time and no longer needs to be a separate file. In all these situations, you will use the Bind command to convert an external reference into a block that will be stored permanently in the host drawing. Open the Xref Manager dialog box and highlight the Cabin12a Xref. Click the Bind button to open the Bind Xrefs dialog box. The two options in the Bind Type area have to do with how layers are treated when an Xref is bound to the host drawing. The default is Bind. It sets the Xref layers to be maintained as unique layers in the host drawing. With the Insert option, layers that have the same name in the two drawin...
Applications for Xrefs There are many different uses for external references. I will describe two common applications to illustrate their range. Let’s suppose you are working on a project as an interior designer and a subcontractor to the lead architect. The architect can give you a drawing of a floor plan that is still undergoing changes. You load this file onto your hard disk, in a specially designated folder, and then Xref it into your drawing as a background— a drawing to be used as a reference to draw over. You can now proceed to lay out furniture, partitions, and so on, while the architect is still refining the floor plan. At an agreed-on time, the architect will give you a revised version of the floor plan. You will overwrite the one that you have on your computer with the latest version. You can then reload the Xref into your furniture layout drawing, and the newer version of the floor plan will now be the background. In this example, the lead architect might al...