Jan
30

Don’t ya just love VISRETAIN?

CADDManager on January 30th, 2005

Check out the variable VISRETAIN. Type in on the command line. It most likely is set to “1” which means retain the XREF layer settings. This is a good thing and it should be set to “1”.

But if there are visibility problems – it may have become corrupted. You may start getting layers not showing up, or layers that are the wrong color. Detach the offending xref. Set VISRETAIN to “0” (off). Purgeall. Then reattach the XREF. See if that fixes it. Be sure to set VISRETAIN back to “1”.

By the way, when you set it to “0” – you will loose all of your layer ON/Off settings for all xrefs, not just the one that was not working right.

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3 Responses to “Don’t ya just love VISRETAIN?”

  1. Anonymous
    February 10th, 2005 at 1:41 PM

    I don’t think you have to detach and reattach to reset the layer properties – I think a reload will do it. I used to have to do this a lot in earlier versions of Autocad – if you changed a layer linetype in a xref’d file, the parent file would become “confused”. This doesn’t seem to happen with the 2000+ versions – I can’t even remember when I last had to do it.

  2. Jim G
    May 1st, 2008 at 11:56 AM

    In production (or sheet) drawings visretain can cause some real problems. One of my users is finshed with a 200 sheet roadway improvement plan set and the Illinois DOT says although it is not required to be in microstation, they want the line types to look like theirs. Now he has to detach, set vretain to 0, re-attach, reestablish all layer states, etc.

  3. Chris L.
    August 2nd, 2011 at 3:46 PM

    The third sentence in the first post is incorrect. According to the Autodesk 2010 website, 0 is the setting which retains xref settings. User beware! This is a very powerful command and can remove carefully frozen layer settings if they are not somehow saved. And remember, each setting is not “good” or “bad.” It’s a setting, and it depends what you are trying to do. See snapshot below for further info:

    0 – The layer table, as stored in the reference drawing (xref), takes precedence. Changes made to xref-dependent layers in the current drawing are valid in the current session only and are not saved with the drawing. When the current drawing is reopened, the layer table is reloaded from the reference drawing, and the current drawing reflects all of those layer property settings.

    1 – Xref-dependent layer changes made in the current drawing take precedence. Layer settings are saved with the current drawing’s layer table and persist from session to session.

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