Overlaying external references

An overlay is an inserted drawing that contains a link to the original file. Overlays allows you to lay a drawing on top of another drawing, similar to the way you work manually with transparencies.

When a drawing that contains overlaid external references is itself attached or overlaid as an external reference in another drawing, the overlays do not appear as part of the external reference. Use overlaying when you want to see reference geometry in a drawing but you do not need to include that geometry in drawings that will be referenced by others.

To overlay an external reference

Advanced experience level

Do one of the following:

Choose Tools > External Reference.
On the Tools toolbar, click the External Reference tool ().
Type xref and then press Enter.

In the prompt box, choose Overlay.
In the Select File To Overlay dialog box, specify the drawing file to be overlaid as an external reference, and then click Open.
Specify the insertion point for the external reference.
Specify the x, y, and z scale factors and the rotation angle, or choose Done to accept the default values.

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Attaching external references

Changing the path for external references

Detaching external references

Inserting and binding external references to drawings

Reloading external references

Xref Clipping