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Choosing XRef Scene displays the XRef Scenes dialog on page 6763 .
Overlays
Overlays allow multiple scene references without the risk of creating circular
dependencies. The scene XRef marked as overlay is loaded only into the master
scene that references it, and is not visible in other scenes that might XRef the
master file that uses the overlay. Consider two scenes that reference each
other:
Ordinarily, 3ds Max would recognize this as a circular dependency, and
disallow it. However, you can set up such a combination of XRefs by following
these steps:
1 In scene 2, XRef scene 1 and use the toggle to flag it as an overlay.
2 Save scene 2.
3 Open scene 1, and XRef scene 2.
Scene 2 is externally referenced into scene 1, without pulling scene 1 in
as a nested external reference.
The previous example is not particularly practical. But suppose you want to
mask off part of your scene so other artists who XRef the scene will not see
it. For example, you are working on a building and have XRefed a CAD file
that lays out the plumbing of the building, as well as a scene of ground terrain
that contains some XRefs to some trees. The XRef scene graph might look like
this:
External References (XRefs) | 6757