Explore the process of importing standard external references into a drawing using the correct coordinate system. Learn the commands and steps necessary to attach and import a DWG file as an external reference in Civil 3D.
Key Insights
- Before importing an external reference, ensure your drawing is in the correct coordinate system. This can be verified by checking if the world coordinates system is selected.
- To attach an external reference, the command 'xref' is used. This opens the xref window from which the 'attach DWG' option is selected to bring up the select reference file window.
- Upon selecting the correct DWG file from the working folder, it's important to leave the scale insertion point rotation unchecked if the drawing is in the world coordinate system. Lastly, the path type should be set as 'relative path' before clicking OK to import the reference.
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In this video, now that we've brought in all of our data shortcuts, we're going to go ahead and bring in a standard external reference. So the first thing you want to go ahead and do is make sure that you have your drawing in the correct coordinate system to bring in your external reference.
So I'm going to go ahead and drop here, make sure that I have World Coordinate System selected. And so then from there, I'm going to go ahead and type in xref as my command. I'm going to hit ENTER and my xref window pops open from here.
I'm going to go ahead and go up to this upper left icon. I'm going to hit the arrow next to it, and I'm going to make sure I select attach DWG. When I do that, my select reference file window comes up and I'm going to make sure that I'm in my Civ 203 working folder.
I'm going to go ahead and select Civ 203 Parcels.dwg so that we can bring in some of the parcels that we're going to be working with inside of our drawing. I'm going to go ahead and click open. And then inside of Attach External References window, I have the name of the file I'm referencing, a preview of the file I'm referencing, my reference type, which I'm going to leave as attach.
I'm going to go ahead and leave the Scale, Insertion Point, Rotation unchecked because we made sure we were in World Coordinate System. And I know that this drawing will reference incorrectly into this drawing if I'm in World Coordinate System. So I don't need to do a scale insertion or rotation transform.
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From there, I'm going to go ahead and leave this as Relative Path for my Path Type, and I'm going to go ahead and click OK. Now that I've clicked OK, I brought in this external reference of Civ 203 Parcels. So I'm going to go ahead and close this xref window.
And inside of my drawing, you're going to notice that I have the Parcel lines and parcels for the external reference that I brought inside Civil 3D. Now that we have an external reference brought into Civil 3D, I'm going to go ahead and save this drawing. And then I'll meet you in the next video, where we'll show the differences between External References and our Data Shortcuts.
