Skip to main content
Al Whitley/4 min read

Reassigning Xrefs and Managing Viewports in AutoCAD

Xref & Viewport Tools

External References

EXTERNALREFERENCES palette manages all linked DWGs.

Reload Path

Right-click xref > Reload to refresh; change path if file moved.

Viewport Controls

Click viewport border to lock, change scale, or freeze layers per viewport.

Layer Visibility

VPLAYER controls layer visibility independently per viewport.

Master AutoCAD at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's AutoCAD Certification teaches drafting, layouts, blocks, and dimensions.

This lesson is a preview from our CAD Certificate Program Online (includes software). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

This AutoCAD tutorial walks through reassigning xrefs and managing viewports in autocad, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Let's now work on our A22 sheet. So A2.2: File, Open. I need to go up to my CDs folder, A202.

There's the preview. Here is the sheet. I'm going to say ignore the references, because we're going to fix them.

I'm going to go to the Xrefs Manager. I'm going to go to the title block, right-click, Detach. Right-click, Attach the Drawing.

Go to the Xrefs. I need to go up to my corporate folder. I will go to the title block.

Insert it at 0,0 with a scale factor of 1. Click OK. Control S to save. Go to the Xrefs.

I'm going to go to my keynotes for the floor plan. Right-click on it and select Detach. Right-click, Attach.

I'm going to go back up to my 304 folder, VDCI, my Xrefs, my keynotes for the floor plan. I'm going to have a scale factor of 1. Specify the insertion base point on screen. I'm going to click OK.

And I will insert it at the end here. Control S to save. Now, follow me on this.

I'm going to begin by going into the model environment. I'm going to go into the Xrefs, right-click the CAD plan model, and I'm going to Detach. No, what I'm going to do is I'm going to reassign its location so I can show you something.

So I have the plan model. I'm going to say go and look in the floor plan file. So reassign it from there.

Open. There we have it. And do you notice what's happening with my layers? Remember how we had dimension visibility by viewport? Remember how we had that going on? If I go back into the model file, you can see that in the model file, I have the two, the 12-inch and the 24-inch scale factor dimensions visible.

If I go into Xrefs, again, what's happened is I've simply reassigned that the CAD plan model file is going to the VDCI floor plan 01 file. If I go into my layers, and we'll get there in just a second, when I go into my layers, it's still referencing the old name. If I want to do an excellent job on this, I'm going to go to my Xrefs.

I'm going to go to the plan model file, right-click, detach. Right-click, attach the floor plan. Insert it at 0,0 with a scale factor of 1. You can see, though, that what's happening is it's now showing my quarter-inch dimensions because this is what was coming in from my original source.

If I go to my sheet file, you're going to see that it looks a bit off because, again, what's happening is the viewports were created and assigned in paper space, but were showing the quarter-inch dimensions. If I go into my layers, and if I turn on my 12- and 24-inch dimensions, I will turn off the 48-scale annotative symbols and dimensions globally in the drawing.

Now what's happening is all I need to do is to go into the viewports themselves and manage the data.

So I'm going to jump in this viewport. I'll go to layer properties. And so that viewport is going to be at an inch equals a foot, which is a scale factor of 12.

So, again, I want to freeze the DIMMS 24 in that viewport. I'm going to expand the box a little bit. I'm going to say expand it so I can see it. So it's going to be the viewport freeze box right here.

I will freeze the 24 scaled in that viewport. You can see that looks fine. I'm going to go in this viewport, just type in LA for layers.

This is, again, half-inch, so in that viewport, I will freeze the 12-inch dimensions. And you'll see it starts to look normal once this collapses due to the auto-hide feature. Both of these viewports down here are going to be at an inch equals a foot, so LA for layers.

I'm going to keep the 24, freeze them in that viewport. Go back into the graphics area. Jump into this viewport right here, LA for layers.

The 24, freeze it in that viewport. And you can now see that the sheet is appropriately reassigned. Double-click to be in paper space.

Save the file. Go to the Xrefs manager, and everything has been fully updated. When we go into the layer managers, you'll see that we are now reflecting the updated file names and layer names that conform to both our office standards and the National CAD standards.

Please try this drawing, and we’ll proceed from here. Good luck with this!