GIS Contours in HARN/12 translated to our local coordinate system

First, apologies if I'm in the wrong forum for this.

I am trying to translate/ transform (unsure of the correct term) Lidar contours from Harn/12 to our local cooridinate system. While I've used Civil for years, I'm new to Map. After some research the process I found goes as follows.

1. Open new dwg, set LCS to Harn. Map import shape file of contours (They come in under Harn/12). Save this drawing as Contour Shape File.dwg
2 Open new dwg, set LCS to our local LCS. Map Explorer --> Attach Contour Shape File.dwg --> Define Query --> Under Boundary Type select ALL then press OK. --> Under Query Mode select Draw. -->Click on Execute Query. --> Map locks completely and I have to End Task from Task Manager.

I can use this process to assign elevations to polylines without problem so long as both drawings don't have an LCS assigned. The problem only happens when I'm trying to get Map to locate the contours to our LCS.

Any ideas on why the drawing is locking, or how I can get around this problem? The shape file drawing is large (383 MB) so I'm worried that it's just an issue with my machines ability to process the information.

1) what's the size of the DWG that you've imported the shp files into?

2) how is your LCS defined?

3) do you get any results if you query a smaller area, rather than all?

4) Can you create a Civil3D surface directly from the shape file, and then extract contours a polylines?