Can More Than One Person Label or Work in One Drawing at Once?

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How to Cross Reference Plans

Question

Is there a way to have more than one person (multiple designers) label in a drawing at once?

Quick Answer

Not in the same drawing file.
 

Why? 

For one, AutoCAD doesn't allow multiple people in one file simultaneously. If you try to open a drawing that someone else already has open, you'll get a Read-Only file.

Solution

Before going ahead with the following workaround, ask yourself, "Will it be faster to set up a drawing for two or more people to label than it would be to just task somebody to start labeling this drawing right now?

If you need more than one person to label in a drawing at the same time, you can divide your site design between drawings. For example, you can have one drawing for the front yard and one for the backyard.

Keep in mind that we never recommend copying existing plant labels between drawing files, as it breaks the labels' associations with the plants. To move plants or other blocks between or within drawings, use our recommended steps for copying blocks.

Once the site is divided into two or more drawings, one designer can label in each of these files. Your office can then cross-reference these labeled files into a main drawing file by bringing them in as overlay Xrefs.