How to modify whole drawing?

[dlane.162299]

Title is a big question, so some detail. I am an experienced 2D AutoCAD user - not an expert. I have been working on combining some drawings of a large manufacturing facility into one drawing. One of the drawings that I have to work with from an outside engineering firm is a pain. It took me a while but i finally figured out that they had put some of the drawing in 3D. Now this is a site layout with buildings, railroads, roads - basically a civil drawing. When I tried to convert some of the perimeter lines for parking and building to polylines to make things easier for what I was doing they would not all convert. Not being a 3D person I was lost. I finally figured it out. Some of the lines just took off into Z-axis space for no good reason.

Now my question. Is there a way to grab the entire drawing and convert it so that it will all be on the X-Y axis with no Z value (Z=0) ???

I managed to make it work by changing individual entities but I have discovered that all this engineering companies drawings are "mined" this same way (as in bombs). The company I worked for paid for these drawings and owns them and this sucks. We have fired this firm and will never use them again.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Glen_Johnston]

Congratulations on your first post! Welcome to AUGI

Check out the "Flatten" tool included in Express Tools. It looks like it will do what you need.

[dzatto]

I was going to suggest the same thing, then I tested it real quick to see how it would affect 3D objects. I usually use it on 2D linework. Anyway, for some reason it was shifting the location of the object, then flattening it. I have no idea why.

I'd try it on your drawing, but just make sure the objects aren't moving around on ya.

[dlane.162299]

Thanks. I tried that and the drawing does not respond right. Some things move and some don't. Making me crazy - I think I will get a rubber hammer and go hit the engineer in the head who did the drawing.

I will keep trying.

Thanks!

[jaberwok]

If you just want a few polylines, use the Pline command and start tracing (snapping) to the objects. You will end up with a 2d polyline that has a z-value that matches the first point you picked. It can be moved to z=0 later or you could start your pline with ".xy" of [pick start point] and state "0" when asked for the z-value.

[Arben.Allaraj]

If you just want a few polylines, use the Pline command and start tracing (snapping) to the objects. You will end up with a 2d polyline that has a z-value that matches the first point you picked. It can be moved to z=0 later or you could start your pline with ".xy" of [pick start point] and state "0" when asked for the z-value.


Maybe is better to use Osnapz=0

[dlane.162299]

Thanks everyone for the help. I got this drawing fixed and I will remember the flatten command and also the pline trace idea.

Appreciate the great help!

[Coolmo]

I've also found that the flatten command does wacky things and sometimes just ignores certain polylines for some reason. Maybe it sees the difference between a POLYLINE (2dpolyline) and an LWPOLYLINE. Whatever the case may be, it's easier for me to just grab all the objects in a drawing and load them into the properties dialog. then I simply click through the separated entity list and reset all the "Elevation" values to 0, depending on the Zvalue options each entity has.

[jaberwok]

I've also found that the flatten command does wacky things and sometimes just ignores certain polylines for some reason. Maybe it sees the difference between a POLYLINE (2dpolyline) and an LWPOLYLINE. Whatever the case may be, it's easier for me to just grab all the objects in a drawing and load them into the properties dialog. then I simply click through the separated entity list and reset all the "Elevation" values to 0, depending on the Zvalue options each entity has.

I agree; simplest is often best.

[mmccarter]

One possible reason for entities moving when running the flatten command is having the option with in the command of "Remove hidden lines? <No>:" set to <Yes>.
Using this command a lot has taught me NEVER to use the yes option. It is tempting to choose yes as the command tends to not abort out mid way as much as if it was set to No. But the trade off here is that as you have discovered, entities move randomly and sometimes arcs etc will change into "wobbly" polylines.
Flatten will abort our if blocks are included in your selection set. It also aborts due to many other circumstances which I can not list entirely as I long ago gave up persevering with this command and usually use "superflatten" (google search for the routine) as it is much better in my experience.
The major draw back with superflatten though is that it only flattens to the world ucs.

[cwjean76]

..... use "superflatten" (google search for the routine) as it is much better in my experience.
The major draw back with superflatten though is that it only flattens to the world ucs.

I would like to add that when you use Superflatten, it will take the solids and convert them to faces(not lines, etc.). Makes for a pain when you clean up the drawing after flattening it. The amount of duplicate objects resulting from doing this is also a nightmare.

I'm in the process of trying to convert these 3d faces into simple lines. See here if anyone has an idea. (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=79924)

[duhvinci]

I don't know if this is still included with AutoCAD but there is a lisp called "project.lsp" that also performs a flatten - maybe it was the ancestor to flatten. I don't imagine it would work on solids but if you were to explode them first I'm sure it would then.