How to transfer level properties and view preferences (including those of references) to other drawings?

Question

I have the following problem: 
 I have a rather complex project with multiple references with about 300 levels each. The big mama plan with all planning information is referenced into single drawings. In the first plan I made all necessary adjustments as colors, weights in all references (as symbology overrides only) and switched on/off various levels (in the level display box) in order to use it as a "master" for the following derived plans. Now two references have been exchanged and need to be adjusted accordingly in 13 drawings. 
 When exporting the levels I only get the levels from the big mama plan itself, not the view adjustments and the changed symbology overrides. Saved views seem to be the wrong way, too. I can't just make all the changes in the references various themselves and reattach them as the big mama plan has been attached multiple times with different display choices and visible levels. 
 Does anyone have an idea as to how to transfer all adjustments in one go? I'd go mad making all adjustments over and over again...

Lorys · Answer

cant you just save the first drawing as the next drawing and move the view... or is it you have changed something in the refences and and the previuosly ok drawings no longer look right? if the later, then 3 things I have found works for me... 
 1. change or add the config variable MS_REF_NEWLEVELDISPLAY=1... this allows changes to the ref to come through to nested existing drawings. after chaged restart mstn and recheck the drawing updated... 
 2.If 1 has had no effect , then a little more painful, got to the master nested file dettach only the changed refs one at a time and reattach them 
 now go and check it worked in all the sheet drags... 
 and 
 3. just in case neither of the above worked and your using sheet models, go to the drawings , go to the model and dettach and reattach the nest.... 
 Now its only 13 plans now neither of these steps is too much to bare. not a whole alignment plan set of 30 - 100 plans... so take a deep breath and try all the steps one at a time.. and check a few plans at random to see if it took effect.... 
 If still no joy...then I assume your drawings are all meant to look all the same just different locations and some text in the sheets... 
 LAST RESORT ..... 
 Then make a temp folder and move all your drawings to the temp folder except the first one, make it look right ie rebuild if you have too 
 now do a save as 12 times of the first drawing.... so all the view settings are the same etc,,, I assume your using sheet models... 
 go to the original drawing number 2... open the sheet model, in ref manager and at the bottom you will see the scale and coodinates of the ref attachement and its rotation copy these into note pad, 
 return to new drawing 2, deleted all notes ets in the sheet, edit the ref manager settings for the nested ref ( copy from note pad), you may have to delete the clip boundary and reclip...now ref attach original sheet 2 not nested and copy either the drawing sheet or text or both depends how your sheets work ie with tags or plain text...note you may need to do this in different order sheet and title block dependent..but you get the idea.. 
 repeat for the rest of the project.. 
 sounds like a lot but it isnt really and you only need to do the exact same thing 12 more times.... so should only take a bout 1 hour... 
 The only thing thats a pain is the copy text from the ref manager settings....to and from note pad... 
 I have had to do this many times before especially when other users or even me didnt notice we used coincident instead of world coincident and all the coordiantes are wrong for 30 plans that have already be fully annotated just no grids and NEs .yet and thats how we found the goof...placeing the grid NE number just looked wrong for local datum///.. 
 Good luck and I hope you only need to do step 1....

Lorys · Answer

so each drawing is tweaked just a little differently to the rest. then your always going to have problems with nests.. 
 I think you need to tailor your nest file(s) for each common set and have several nests...( use the save as and tweak) 
 I have different nests with the similar subfiles one for drainage plans, and another for existing features which is used in many plans and for line marking set of plans I use a copy of the alignment plan nest , rename it and put overrides for colours on one of the reffiles which would be unsuitable for the alignment plans.. this way I dont have to tweak views for specific plan sets sheet by sheet... just create and setup specific nested files with the view teaks already in them.. sound like more work but its not its actually faster and is more reliable....

How to transfer level properties and view preferences (including those of references) to other drawings?

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