VISRETAIN

If you work with xrefs (refer to Chapter 18), you know the potential for competing layer properties. Sometimes you want your xref to look different from your current drawing so you can tell which is which. You can change layer colors of xrefs in the Layer Property Manager, but whether you have to do that every time you open a drawing with an attached xref depends on the setting of the VISRETAIN system variable. When VISRETAIN is set to 0, the layer properties in the xref take precedence, which means you would have to make those changes every time you opened the host drawing. When VISRETAIN is set to 1 (the default value), changes you make to layer properties in the host drawing remain intact every time you open that host drawing; however, those changes have no effect on the external file itself. The VISRETAIN value is stored in the current drawing.