XCLIP/WIPEOUT Combo
The XCLIP and WIPEOUT commands are used to quickly hide specific areas in your drawing. First of all, an XCLIP takes an externally referenced drawing and hides certain areas using a boundary. The boundary can be reversed to show the inside or outside of the object that you are clipping. There are a few different types of CLIP commands, so pick the appropriate clip to use on the object; XCLIP, IMAGECLIP, or VPCLIP. Wipeout creates a mask that you can place anywhere on your drawing to cover all the entities beneath it. Here are two different external references overlayed on top of each other.
My goal here is to hide the stairs, walkway and kitchen fixtures, but show everything else. First, I will create an XCLIP around the exterior walls and that will hide the stairs and walkway. Notice, if I reverse the XCLIP, the kitchen fixture and interior walls will be hidden and that’s not what I want.
Next, I will create a wipeout out to completely cover the dining room and kitchen area.
Finally, I will adjust the draw order of XR_B, room labels and wipeout, to hide the kitchen fixtures. In this case I would want to bring my room labels and XR_B above the wipeout.
To adjust draw order, select an object, right-click, click Draw Order, and select the appropriate option. Alternatively type DR in the command line.
To hide the WIPEOUT frame, use the Express Tool TFRAMES in the command line.
Here is the end result:
Of course, this was only a simply example and layers could be used to accomplish the same task if the XREF was well organized. As you may know, drawings are not always well organized. When they are not, this can be a quick way to hide pieces of your drawing or images before plotting. On the other hand, you do not want to overuse clipping or wipeouts, as they can make a drawing more complicated than it needs to be.
