New 9.1 behaviour with DWGs creating toposurfaces

[Wes Macaulay]

In 9.1, a DWG imported current-view-only cannot be used to create a toposurface. On the one hand that makes sense -- it's now 2D only right? Why should you be able to make 3D geometry from it? On the other hand it's great to only have to turn off that ugly survey drawing in one view. Now you have to turn it off in every damn view if you're making a topo from it. :banghead:

Shall we ask the Factory to restore previous behaviour in this regard?

[Joef]

My question is: Why was it changed and who changed it? Perhaps there was a very good reason. If the person who changed it would let us know the thought (if any) that went into this it would help us determine the usefulness of it. My personal opinion is that it is a bug.

Joe

[Wes Macaulay]

I thought it was maybe a bug too until the new build released yesterday showed that it probably isn't. I filed it some time ago and did not get word back that it was a bug, though they fixed the file update and revision schedule bugs...

[davidcobi]

Does the new build fix the "Placing the very first room on a level causes unnecessary recomputations" bug too.

We do a lot of importing topography and would be more productive if this behavior would revert to the way it originally was.

[Andre Baros]

I really liked the fact that you could create a single view for the linked survey drawing and not have to turn it off everywhere. This is one "feature" which didn't need fixing.

And what update Wes? I'm still seeing the 20006_0810_2300 build listed and really need the update bug fixed before we move to 9.1...

[Wes Macaulay]

There's a download link in the General forum, mate -- already ahead of you ;-)

[nj_lockwood]

I understand the convenience of the old behavior, however, there were some downsides.

The 3d positions of view specific imports with neither guaranteed nor particularly discoverable by users, nor for that matter modifiable. As a result, we received many complaints through tech support and other channels complaining about the mysterious elevations of toposurface generated off of view specific imports. In many cases, the generated toposurfaces were thousands of feet above or below where expected, and the users could not even find them.

Maybe we could have "guessed" where to put the toposurface based on some criteria - though the result would still not be very precise.

At any rate, one current workaround is to import a non-viewspecific import and a view specific one. User the non-viewspecific one to make the toposurface, then delete it.

Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention (about the value of the old workflow). It will be useful to consider that workflow as we further develop the product. Honestly, we failed to consider the utility that was being offered by the view specific imports for this purpose. That having been said, for various reasons I am not at liberty to get into, I think the decision we made to "keep the user honest" ;-) about using 3d objects to produce 3d objects will be vindicated.

Let us know if you require further workaround possibilities and we can think about it some more.

[Wes Macaulay]

I don't doubt that you got complaints from users who didn't understand that you're placing 3D data at some level other than zero -- but you can still do that under the circumstances. Something that needs to be added to the help file is that survey data should be added on a level with an elevation of zero!

The fact that you can't move a view-specific object in the Z axis does give credibility to this change. So it is rational after all...

Thanks very much for explaining Factory reasoning!

[Dimitri Harvalias]

There's a download link in the General forum, mate -- already ahead of you ;-)Hey Wes,
thanks for posting that and it's great to always have the latest build link in a familiar place.
Thought I'd let you know, the forum software doesn't seem to list postings as 'new' if you just edit them. What that means is even if you edit your initial post to have the latest build link it won't automatically show up when I open the forum and click the new posts shortcut. I wasn't aware that a new build was available.
Is there a way to have that thread posted as a sticky that only you have access to? That way you can just add the latest build below the first post.

[Wes Macaulay]

I knew that editing the post wouldn't count as a new post, and even mulled over adding a post to that thread just so people would be aware of it. Which I will do now ;-)

[Dimitri Harvalias]

You da man, man. (even with that funny hat in your avatar!)

[dbaldacchino]

To get around the problem of having that topo dwg visible everywhere, create a workset that is not visible by default in all views and place the dwg on it. That way, you don't have to maintain it in every view if you wish to retain it in your project.

[D_Driver]

For non-workset projects instead of inserting 2 instances, and deleting...
import/link to all views, create the topo, publish coordinates to the dwg, then remove the link
duplicate the site plan view and then import link current view only to shared coordinates.

six of one, half dozen of the other...

I feel that if you are going to be using a topo-DWG, you kind of half - haveToKnow the general configuration of the topo-DWG is anyway. If you do get one of those civil drawing where the origin point is 1 mile away and 5000' below the topography lines and then this is imported into all views then the user does a zoom fit, then all you see is white. I agree this is a new user issue, but then they go to another view and zoom fit and it does the same thing... it is very difficult to see how multiplying the situation (requiring topo to be in all views) really helps the end user with this issue. That is just my 2 cents anyway.