ERHIGHLIGHT and the External References Palette

I've heard a couple reports of people complaining that selecting xrefs in the External References palette can really slow down when working in very large or complex drawings. It occurred to me that not everyone may know about the new ERHIGHLIGHT system variable that was introduced in AutoCAD 2011.

Prior to AutoCAD 2011, there was no visual connection between a selected xref name in the External References palette and the corresponding xref object in the drawing window. AutoCAD 2011 added that visual connection so that, by default, selecting an xref in the palette highlighted the xref object in the drawing and vice versa.  This makes it easy to identify xrefs but, in complex drawings, things can slow down a bit as AutoCAD is busy highlighting the xrefs you selected.

This highlighting behavior can be controlled using the ERHIGHLIGHT system variable.  Setting ERHIGHLIGHT to 0 turns off the automatic highlighting of selected xrefs; setting ERHIGHLIGHT to 1 turns it back on so.

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Technical solution:
2011: Slow xref selection in External References palette

Comments

[doug barense]

It would seem that if users are having issues with slow response times to this feature there should be a quick method on the External Reference palette to turn this off and on (i.e. a small green button, like a ide light, for on and grey for off).

[Tom Stoeckel]

I tend to agree and I have passed your suggestion on to the appropriate people.

Thanks,
Tom