3d solids - the good, the bad, and the ugly question

[royboy666]

Has anyone noticed that there are 2 types of 3d solids ?

1. The Good - none, you can't stretch them, silliest thing in the world to be part of Autocad and not be able to use a basic command on.

2. The Bad - 3d solids that have nodes, very useful for making MINOR corrections after you have created the solid.

3. The Ugly - do anything like union or subtraction to the solid, it is then set in stone, completely unmodifiable. Must be redrawn to revise.

That being said, I use them all the time for exporting to 3ds Max.

The question is why if I wblock, and get the dialogue box it gives the option to RETAIN the selection, which is what I want, and it does a fine job and leaves the 3d solids in the drawing in there "bad" state, perfect.

Now I wote some code to quickly copy out of Autocad, then paste into 3ds Max by have Autocad simple wblocking and overwiting a specific file, then I wrote some code in 3ds Max that will import that specific cad file with a button click. Works like a charm.

To do this, within the lisp file I turn the dialogue boxes off, filedia 0, then I -wblock (there is no option to RETAIN), I simply then added a "oops" command to bring back the selection set that was wblocked.

I have copied and pasted over 1500 objects at one time using this utility ( I draw everything in Autocad) 98% of the objects are 3d solids.

Everyone of the 3d solid turns from "bad" to "ugly" in a blink of the eye simply by using the "oops" command. Very annoying to say the least.

Try it yourself extrude a rectangle, click on it, you can move the nodes. Erase it, type "oops", BAM, nodes gone.

I would really love to hear from a guy from Autodesk to explain this. I mean you can literally create a very complex 3d solid, which I have done, accidentally erase it , use to great "oops" command, come back later to tweak the 3d solid, and be like WTF.

I have already modified my utility to issue a "undo" after the wblock to solve the problem. I just have to remember to stay away form using the "oops" command, I just love typing that in, been doing it for years !

[ntellery]

which version are you using?  You can stretch solids now, just not with the stretch command.

You can convert to masselements, alter and then convert back to solids if what you want to do is easier with ME's.

[royboy666]

Autocad Architecture 2014, thats this year, correct ?

Draw a rectangle, extrude it any amount you want, erase it, type "oops", nodes gone.

The issue is, it does this without you knowing so say for example, some yahoo in the office worked on the drawing, and exploded say a concrete hatch because he did not want to modify it the correct way, I go in there and have to delete all of the little pieces of the hatch because I can't filter them out using the filter command, more often then not I accidentally select something I did not want deleted, I type "oops", all the objects come back, then I erase again but typing "p" which will select all the little pieces I already selected, then I deselect the item that I did not want deleted, bam, done. You cannot use "undo" because it will get rid of your selection set and you have to select all the little pieces all over again.

That is just one example, it happens all the time. Then later on in life you go back and you copy and paste the nice 3d object you made into another job, which has to be a tad bit longer on one part of it, WTF, you can't modify it becasue it turned "ugly" without you knowing it.

I have a post-it on my computer saying "Careful using Oops", I kid you not.

[dbroad]

Thanks for the notice of the erase/oops problem.  I had not experienced that before.  At this station, if I use wblock with retain option, the solids in the current drawing do not change.  But they do change if wblock delete option is used and then oops back.

[ntellery]

Wow yes that is bad.  Have you reported it as a bug.

http://download.autodesk.com/us/support/report_a_bug.html

Latest version 2015 has just come out and it's still just as you describe.

Before they made solids editable recently, I would just copy the same object to one side and then union to the 2.

[royboy666]

Yeah, its amazing, I would have never have figured it out if I did not write that utility to copy and paste into 3ds Max. Before that I would notice that some of the 3d solids lost the nodes, I chalked it up to Autocad having a random glitch, I could not figure it out until I used the utility and ALL 650 or so 3d solids lost thier nodes, in one second. It was the "oops" command all along.