Cleaning Drawings & Xrefs
- Common Question: I Cleaned My Drawing, but It's Still Showing Corruption! Why?
- How to Clean a Drawing
- About Drawing Corruption
- Related Webinars
A substantial portion of the issues seen by our technical support team are the result of drawing corruption, almost always originating from a file that has been Xrefed into the main drawing set. With a few simple steps, you can get rid of drawing corruption and get back to work.
It's important to note that our software does not cause or spread drawing corruption. It's an issue that's inherent to AutoCAD and DWG files. We just recognize the importance of avoiding corruption, so we've engineered our software with the ability to detect and eradicate it.
Can't do anything in a drawing, or is the drawing freezing up? You might have a DVIEW twist. Solution
Drawing cleanup: Ignore at your own risk!
Cleaning drawings and all Xrefs will take time – you cannot avoid this. But trust us: You'll lose much, much more time to a corrupt drawing than you'll spend cleaning drawings and Xrefs. You have a simple decision to make, right here, right now: Spend some time to understand and implement drawing cleanup practices, or spend far more time at a far more inopportune moment to deal with recreating entire drawings. The choice is yours.
Common Question: I Cleaned My Drawing, but It's Still Showing Corruption! Why?
We've had several Land F/X users tell us that they cleaned their drawing, Nuked or manually cleaned everthing multiple times using the Land F/X steps, but it's still showing that there's corruption. Here's why that happens:
If you Nuke a drawing and it later comes back corrupted again (you open the drawing and it again has bad proxies and RegApps), then something about your cleaning process is not complete. These bad proxies and registered applications can reinfect a cleaned drawing in a few ways:
1. Through an instance of open AutoCAD: The other instance doesn't even need to be open at the same time. If you open the dirty drawing, it loads the proxies into CAD. From there, can infect other drawings that are opened before you restart CAD.
2. By saving a drawing after running Nuke because of the issue above. You can close after running Nuke without saving. At that point,
3. By opening CAD with QNEW linked to a corrupted DWT template file – again, due to point #1 above.
4. By not cleaning an Xrefed drawing: The file you've Xrefed in will just reinfect your drawing through the Xref link. Always clean drawing files you plan to use as Xrefs before Xrefing them in, then clean your drawing.
5. By inserting corrupted blocks: The block could be a title block template, a site block, a detail block, general notes – anything corrupted.
Use these 5 points to track down the source of the re-corruption, and you'll have a squeaky clean drawing again!
How to Clean a Drawing
Prerequisite: Detect corruption in your drawing set
Make sure you have the Proxy Information dialog box configured according to our recommendations. That way, you'll be able to detect corruption in the drawing set– and know that you'll need to complete the following steps.
Step 1: Save
Save the file to your computer – ideally in the correct project folder. Identify needed Xref drawing files.
Step 2: Shut down CAD, restart, and reopen the drawing
Why? Because drawing corruption can travel through an instance of AutoCAD. This means you can open a corrupt file, close it and keep AutoCAD open, then open a clean file, and the corruption will still jump into the clean file. Closing AutoCAD often prevents cleaned drawings from becoming corrupted in this way.
Step 3: Detach unneeded Xrefs
Open the file, and detach all irrelevant or unreferenced Xrefs. This can include any files that were not sent to you or aren't necessary for your design.
Are there Xrefs in here that you do need? After detaching the Xrefs you don't need:
1. Save this drawing.
2. Close AutoCAD or F/X CAD completely.
3. Open the Xref file you do need, and clean it first.
Why? If the corruption is coming from an Xref, which is where it will come from almost every time, it doesn't matter how many times you clean it – the Xref will keep reinfecting it. Detach and clean all attached (and necessary) Xrefs first.
Don't know what an Xref is? See our Working with External References (Xrefs) article.
Step 4: Clean the file
Clean the drawing file using one of two possible methods:
Quick video
Option 1: Running our Nuke tool on drawings you receive from others
Our Nuke tool automates several important cleanup commands and combines them into one button. It's a way to clean drawings and Xrefs with a single click.
Do not run the Nuke tool on your own drawings. The Nuke tool is designed to clean Xrefs by deleting layout tabs and setting everything to ByLayer, among other actions. As a result, it will delete several critical items in your own working drawing but makes Xrefs more usable.
Nuke tool running slowly, not completing, or crashing AutoCAD? Here's what to do.
Quick video
Option 2: Cleaning the drawing manually
If you have layout tabs you can't afford to lose, or if you're simply not comfortable running an automated cleanup process on drawing files, you can also complete our manual drawing cleanup steps.
Step 5: Reassign the correct Land F/X project to the clean file
Now that you're working in a new file, don't forget to use our Projects tool to open the project that was originally assigned to the file you cleaned. That project will now be assigned to the clean file.
Repeat!
Repeat steps 1 through 5 on every DWG file you receive.
Optional but recommended: Change Layer Colors
Each time you receive a drawing from an outside party, such as a client or consultant, that drawing will likely have a different layer color scheme from your preferred one. Want to work in your own standard layer colors? Use our Layer Colors tool to create and save a layer color profile for your office, and for each client or consultant whose drawings you commonly receive. You can select your own office's color profile when you begin working on these drawings – in fact, we recommend incorporating this practice into your standard drawing cleanup steps. Then, when you're ready to submit after making your edits, assign that client or consultant's layer color profile back to the drawing.
About Drawing Corruption
The vast majority of the technical support issues we see are the direct result of drawing corruption.
What is drawing corruption, and what causes it? Find out here.
Although you might encounter drawing corruption while using our software – and it can definitely result in huge problems with Land F/X objects, such as plants or irrigation equipment losing all their assigned data throughout a drawing – it's not actually a Land F/X issue. Drawing corruption spreads from file to file, and it commonly originates in drawings created by those outside the landscape or irrigation fields, such as civil engineers. It's caused by AutoCAD objects that can be present in any DWG file, whether or not it was created using our software. These include:
- RegApps
- DGN linetypes
- Proxy objects
- Layer filters
- Scale list entries
- Shape definitions
All these issues are completely preventable with proper drawing cleanup.
How to Prevent Corruption in Future Drawings
Although the process of cleaning a drawing set can address existing corruption issues, we strongly recommend implementing a specific prevention and cleanup process as a standard procedure in your office for anyone who opens a drawing. This process will become a valuable safeguard against the spread of drawing corruption.
Remember: The drawing cleanup instructions outlined above are one component of a larger set of steps to prevent corruption in all drawing files you open. We can't put enough stress on the importance of taking the time to learn about drawing corruption and how to avoid it. It's a CAD best practice that will only save you time and effort in the future.
Related Webinars
- Drawing File Cleanup: Addressing DWG Corruption: Drawing corruption is a major source of headaches and lost work for CAD designers. We walk you through the process of cleaning your drawings and show you some effective techniques for detecting and troubleshooting corruption when it strikes. (1 hr)
Contact
- Land F/X
Our software tailors AutoCAD® to the needs of landscape architects, irrigation designers, and other professionals. We automate your most tedious tasks and ensure accuracy, giving you more time to design.