Hi Guys,

I am totaly new to autocad, just got my hands on Autocad 2009 and need to do a few basic things for my purpose (I am builder)

I have 2 DWG files. 1 is the existing floor plan of a building and the other is a new plan of the building (i.e changes and additions etc to the floor plan)

I want to change the color the first drawing to say RED (i.e all text all lines all boxes, everything is changed to red)
Then i want to change the color of the second drawing to say BLUE (again evertying on this drawing to be blue)

Then i want to overlay drawings 1 & 2 on same page so I can see exactly what the differences are from the 2 drawings and be able to print this drawing.

Remembering im a complete newb to Autocad can someone outline step on how i can achieve this in Autocad 2009?


Thanks in advance.

For what are you writing about is XREFs - command [CMD]XREF[/CMD] will overlay or attach (differences between that possibilities you'll find in help) selected drawing into an active (current) drawing. Colors for each xref depend layer you can change in Layer Manager (command [CMD]LAYER[/CMD]) according to your requests, multiple select of layers is possible too, so you can change all layers in the whole xref at once.

yes u can use xref as suggested above (dont forget that both plans have to be at the same location and in correct scale). But as you havent worked with autocad before, I would suggest smth "more simple":
create new drawing, copy both drawing into this new one. select the first model and change the color to red, 2nd to blue. You could create new layers (blue, red) so that you have each layout in different layers. Or after you changed the color of both plans you could create block of each the plans. Either way, now you can move one plan over the other one and you can c the differencies.

Hi thanks for the help but im still struggling.

What im doing is,

Select all, and copy
then i paste into a new drawing as block (ie. paste special)
then i try select all and change the color but it doesnt work.
it says the layer color is different but i dont see the change on the drawing.

The way im doing is by going to the "Format" tab then "Color" then i select my desire color but nothing changes?

can you give me a more step by step process please?

Yes, that is the normal behavior of blocks, if you have block and change it's color, you don't change color of separate entities inside the block, ale only the color of it's wrapping, and it has effect only for enetities with color set as ByBlock.I really think, that the better way is throuhg the xrefs... try this steps:- command [CMD]XREF[/CMD] - there button Attach DWG- select the drawing you want to overlay and click open- set overlay and everything else to 0 and OK- if nothing is seen, zoom all- go to Layer manager (command [CMD]LAYER[/CMD]), there is a tree at the left side of the dialogue, unroll xref and there you see your overlayed drawing, select it- to all layers (right part of dialogue) of your xref (select it through right mouse button - select all, or ctrl+a if the layer part of dialogue is active) change the color- OK and exit the dialoguerepeat it for second drawing too.
Kackac2008-11-28 09:24:39

if you are pasting the new object as a block, than you can change the color of the object by "editing the block". You can do it by 2 commands: bedit or refedit.
You cannot simply select block and change the color. You could as well explode the block, select the exploded object, change the color, and than create new block again or you could put it into new layer with desired color.