Xref vs. Place External Drawing in ArchiCad 12

[Anonymous]

New user here. I've been an AutoCad user for years. New job in an office using ArchiCad. Just curious, anyone know the advantages / disadvantages of using the "Xref" or "Place External Drawing" features for AutoCad backgrounds as external content? My understanding from the reference guide is "Place" is better. But does that allow you to control external content layers / display? Is there a previous post on the topic? Thanks!

[Djordje]

Place external drawing does not populate your layer list with all the XRef layers, and it is still snappable. IMHO the best way to use DWGs and DXFs for reference.

[Thomas Holm]

But
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=128575#128575

and

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=111690#111690

and

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=115066#115066

The forum Search (to the right of the FAQ link above) is your friend!

Edited: At this time (Feb.10-09), Vistasp's ArchiSearch page is the best:
http://archicadstuff.blogspot.com/

[Anonymous]

"The forum Search (to the right of the FAQ link above) is your friend!"

THANK YOU!! I knew there was a way to search the forum, but couldn't find it in the rush of the end of the day yestreday.

[Djordje]

The Forum Search is not to be confused with the Graphisoft Web Site Search, the field in the upper right corner.

So, to repeat: the Search that you are looking for is the one between the FAQ and the Memberlist buttons!

[Anonymous]

How do I place a metric DWG from a consultant into an imperial Archicad PLN at the correct scale?

[Laszlo Nagy]

When you place the DWG as External Drawing using the Drawing Tool, a Drawing Unit Dialog comes up where you can set how much 1 Drawing Unti of AutoCAD should be equal to how much distance in ArchiCAD.
There is a Custom [inch] and a Custom [meter] option. Use one of them, probably Custom [inch] will suit you needs.

[Anonymous]

LINZ wrote:
How do I place a metric DWG from a consultant into an imperial Archicad PLN at the correct scale?

I believe that all you need to do is specify the correct drawing units when you import the file. These will be the units set in the DWG file itself so if metric they will probably be mm or m. If you use inches and it was set to mm the model will be 25.4 times too big so it's easy to figure out if the first try doesn't work.

[Anonymous]

I want to do very simple thing. Place dwg drawing in a worksheet. When I set the scale of the worksheet to 1:50 - imported dwg displays as it should. When I change the scale to 1:500, all text size in dwg changes ! I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN ! How do I do this, that I change the scale of the worksheet but dwg text size does not change. Any help much appreciated.

[Eduardo Rolon]

The problem is on how Archicad deals with fonts and there are 2 options on how to fix it. Option 1 is what I usually do and 2 might be worth the try if you need to import a lot of stuff.

• 01.A Explode the DWG
  01.B Select the Text Tool and do a select all to grab all the text
  01.C Change the selected Text Settings from "Paper" to "Model"
  01.D Change the Scale of the Worksheet
  01.E Change the Text Settings back to "Paper"

Option 02 is to change the scale of the Text during import, see image