Nested xRefs

leechdemon

Alright, so I'm amassing a library of models for a scene I'm working on. I model an Outdoor Light, save it to A.max. I model a sign that the light is shining onto, xRef the Scene A.max (the light), and I save it to B.max. Now I model a scene, I take B.max, xRef THAT scene into my overall scene. With me so far?

When trying to move my xRef of B.max, as soon as I bind B.max to a dummy object, the copies of A.max (inside the reference of B.max) instantly bind to the same dummy. First off, this is a big problem. Second though, and just as bad, is when I move the dummy, then unbind B.max, A.max snaps back to where it was before I bound B.max, ignoring all of the repositioning done to the dummy.

While this seems to point to nested xRefs being a bad idea, the weirdest part is that I get the problem about 10% of the time; most of the time it's fine, then all of the sudden I run into one file that just refuses to be nested.

HELP!!!

Mark Dygert

Yep, Xrefs are a great idea but horribly broken in older versions of Max. In 2010 and higher they added "containers" and they aren't done overhauling the whole idea yet, 2011 will see some huge improvements to the container system also.

They probably won't rip xrefs out of max, but rather leave them horribly broken and encourage people to use the containers.

leechdemon

Actually, I think I solved the problem. It seems like A.max was unbound when I saved B.max. Not sure why this would cause any problems, but I tried leaving A.max bound, and it works great now. I'm guessing that accounts for why it works some times, but not others.

Yeah, I've heard about Containers; other than making them work, what's the advantage over xRefs? Seems like they'd be better off fixing xRefs, rather than writing a whole new feature into the system.

Mark Dygert

Well... Not much is different in 2010 containers. In 2011 they will allow local editing of container content simultaneously by multiple users. So you can have a container in your scene, that someone else created, change whats inside while they're working on it and never have to close your scene and open another.

It also has a nifty little browser which lets you see what belongs to who and who's working on what and what the permissions are. They have a video of it in action on their site.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13567426