Faded XREF in 2010? XDWGFADECTL

So, I made some Plan and Profile sheets in Civil 3D 2010 for the first time yesterday. This is in the Output tab, on the Plan Production panel*.

When I created sheets I sent the new layouts to a new drawing, as I tend to do. (If you don't do that, I highly recommend it - keeps the file sizes down and allows you to work faster.)

Anyhow, since I created the sheets this way, the original plan drawing gets XREF'd into the P&P sheet drawing. There's a new setting in 2010 that makes the XREF appear faded out by default.

Write this down:

XDWGFADECTL

This setting can be set from 0-90 (90 representing a 90% fade). You can set this to a negative value if you find that you are switching between faded and non-faded frequently. For instance setting this value to -55 will NOT fade out the XREF but is a handy "reminder" if you often want to get back to 55 without digging through the Post-it notes at your desk.

Note that the XREF will not plot this way. It's just a handy way to visually recognise which elements are from an external reference.

Thanks to Esteemed Colleague Russ for helping me with this.

Have a great weekend!

*Oh, by the way: I am ALL ABOUT the ribbon panel for Civil 3D 2010. It was a well-executed implementation of the technology. Once you get the feel for where stuff is, it is SO much faster than digging through menus. LOVE IT! BE the ribbon.