I work for a manufacturing company in the construction industry. We have a situation in which we use architect's CAD files to base our work on. We take the floor plans (multi-story buildings) and usually strip everything out of them except the shell and certain structural features (or something similar). Then we use the shell of the floor plan to layout our products. Most architects are very co-operative and supply drawings that are usable, but a few (very paranoid) characters either don't want to give us the drawings (which are our clients property) or supply us with drawings which are very difficult to use. As an example: I just received a bunch of CAD files, 12 different floor plans and about 60+ support files. Unfortunately, the floor plans Xref some of the support files which in turn xref other support files and sometimes even reference themselves. Multiple support files reference some of the same support files and in turn are referenced into the floor plan. Also there are some missing reference files. As you can see, it's a bit of a hornet's nest.... Can I do anything short of going into each file and reducing it down to it's basic self (not attractive in the least). I would, in essence, like to have these reference drawings somehow inserted, exploded and then erase everything I want to get rid of. BTW... I have tried to bind/bind and bind/insert the xrefs but when the drawing regenerates it get an "invalid" message and nothing happens. Please, any suggestions? TIA
