Skip to main content
Al Whitley/3 min read

Remapping Xrefs in AutoCAD: Updating File Paths for Enhanced Drawing Efficiency

Xref Path Remap Workflow

1

Open External References

EXTERNALREFERENCES palette.

2

Find Missing Xrefs

Yellow warning icons indicate broken paths.

3

Right-Click > Change Path

Browse to new file location.

4

Convert to Relative Paths

Use relative paths so project moves cleanly.

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 remapping xrefs in autocad: updating file paths for enhanced drawing efficiency, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Let's now remap the information that's here in the sheet environment. I'm going to go to XREFs, and I'm going to first go to the title block. You see that it's not found.

This is where it's looking for it. Just like before, we will select on the saved path, go to the dots. It remembers that we were in the VDCI XREFs folder.

Well, if you look at your remapping PDF, you see that the title block is not in the XREFs folder. Rather, it's in the Corporate Blocks folder. I will go here.

I will go to CAD 304, go to Corporate Blocks. And I'm going to be choosing my TTLB file. I will go Open.

You can see that it's now brought in the title block file. And you can also remember that we have the TBTX file that contained the attributes. That, again, was inserted.

It was not XREFed. And so that remained a part of the drawing. What I'd like to do next is I'd like to go ahead and bring in the keynotes file, go back over to XREFs, go to the Keynotes Site Plan, go to the bar, go dot, dot, dot.

It remembers we're in Corporate Blocks. I've gone up one level to CAD 304. I'll go to VDCI.

Again, these are XREFs. The new names, VDCA Architectural Sheet File. This would be the keynotes for the site plan.

I'm going to go Open. It has now remapped it. I'm going to close that.

We have one more to do. Now what's happened is I have my XREFs tab on auto-hide. What I did was close it.

I'm just going to type in XR for the XREF Manager. I'm going to go to my plan model file, go to the dots. It's in the XREFs folder.

I have my floor plan file, VDCA-AFP01. I'm going to go Open. It's remapped it.

Even with all of the remapping that's going on, it remembers layer visibility. We traced the outline of the building in the model space environment of this AS100 sheet file. So that's why the outline showed up.

But the roof configuration, the roof plan, was a part of the actual XREF floor plan. It does not really matter whether you're in paper space or model space when you update the XREFs, because this is a drawing environment. So again, we've remapped everything.

There are traces back to the original files. Because again, under this column, you can see the names of the original files. But over here on the right are the saved paths.

And again, with the original file names being remembered, that when we go to the layers, the layer names will still contain references back to the original files. Because remember, when you XREF something in, it remembers the layer state, remembers the layer names, and it also remembers the pointer back to the original XREF. If you felt that it was critical that everything be renamed, what you would need to do would be to detach the XREFs and then to go ahead and reattach everything.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to Zoom Extents. I'm going to Zoom Real Time with one click. I'm going to pan.

I'm going to save. And then we will continue on with our next sheet.