Whether you are just looking for a quick and easy way to manage Xrefs and re-path them in a snap or if you have used the AutoCAD Express Tool XPATH in AutoCAD 2002 or earlier, Refman is the answer. In AutoCAD 2004 the Reference Manager “Refman” was added to AutoCAD. The Reference Manager has more features than the past XPATH Express Tool but many are not aware of this hidden gem. The Reference Manager can be run outside of AutoCAD and without AutoCAD even running.
You can locate the Reference Manager from the Windows Start Menu > Programs > Autodesk > AutoCAD 200x > Reference Manager.
AutoCAD drawings can reference several types of external files including other drawings, text fonts, images, and plot configurations. The paths to these referenced files are saved in each AutoCAD drawing. Sometimes you may need to move drawing files or the files that they reference to different folders or to different disk drives. The saved reference paths then need to be updated. To open each drawing file and then update each saved reference path manually can be a tedious process.
The Autodesk Reference Manager provides tools to list referenced files in selected drawings and to modify the saved reference paths without opening the drawing files in AutoCAD. With Reference Manager, drawings with unresolved references can be easily identified and fixed. You can search, select all, invert selections, edit paths, and even user find and replace.
The old AutoCAD Express Tool XPATH dialog which could only be ran from inside AutoCAD
The New Reference Manager Dialog
Give Reference Manager a try as it makes drawing external dependency listing, path editing, and reporting of multiple AutoCAD drawings a snap!
Cheers,
Shaan
