Disappearing Contours

[CadKid1]

I am editing a basemap drawing from an out-of-house source that had contour lines in it when I first started. There was to be no Civil3D editing per se, even though the drawing was opened and edited in it. The file was pretty low-tech to begin with. Because the drawing was already a confusing mess, I turned the contour layers off and edited what I was assigned to update. My problem is that the contours did not re-appear when I turned those layers back on.

If I use quick select to select objects on that layer, it lists 134 "ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY"s, but no grips or selections appear on the drawing. No type of property changes seem to make them visible again. Exploding them just seems to banish them to who-knows-where.

I don't know how this file was originally created, but I think maybe it was with some old version of LDD. The funny thing is that I had been able to see the contour lines at first. When I open the original recieved file, the contours won't show up in it, either.

Any help or Ideas on getting these entities to show up again would be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

This has been discussed a few times in the past, most recently that I recall
around the 13th of this month in the thread "AECC_Contours Missing in 2010".
You don't say which version you are using, but I suspect 2010. If you have
access to 2009 or 2011, one way to work around this: open the original
drawing in one of them, explode the contours, wblock them out then paste
into the 2010 drawing.


"Cadkid1" wrote in message news:6399290@discussion.autodesk.com...
> I am editing a basemap drawing from an out-of-house source that had
> contour lines in it when I first started. There was to be no Civil3D
> editing per se, even though the drawing was opened and edited in it. The
> file was pretty low-tech to begin with. Because the drawing was already a
> confusing mess, I turned the contour layers off and edited what I was
> assigned to update. My problem is that the contours did not re-appear
> when I turned those layers back on.
>
> If I use quick select to select objects on that layer, it lists 134
> "ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY"s, but no grips or selections appear on the drawing.
> No type of property changes seem to make them visible again. Exploding
> them just seems to banish them to who-knows-where.
>
> I don't know how this file was originally created, but I think maybe it
> was with some old version of LDD. The funny thing is that I had been able
> to see the contour lines at first. When I open the original recieved
> file, the contours won't show up in it, either.
>
> Any help or Ideas on getting these entities to show up again would be
> appreciated.

[CadKid1]

Yes, I'm using 2010. Unfortunately, I only have access to 2008 and 2010.

[bruce.jordan]

Are these LDT contour objects, or a Civil 3D surface.

When you do quick select to select the objects, if you LIST the objects, does anything list as being "invisible"? If they list as invisible, then it's actually a Map feature that is "hiding" the contours.

One thing I still see every once in awhile is a setting in displaymanager. Type DISPLAYMANAGER at the command line, in the left column expand the drawing name, expand configurations -> Standard and click on Plan.

On the Display Representation Control Tab and the Objects column (first column) browse down to Civil Contour Object and make sure the General column is checked on for Civil Contour Object.

-Bruce

[CadKid1]

Bruce,

Thanks for the advice.

This is typical of what I get when listing them:

ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY Layer: "xg-contour"
Space: Model space
Handle = aee4
DXF name: AECC_CONTOUR
Class name: AeccDbContour
Application name: LAN_AECCBASE
Product Desc: AutoCAD Civil 3D
Company: Autodesk,Inc.
WEB Address: www.autodesk.com

I tried the DISPLAYMANAGER command - there didn't seem to be a Civil Contour Object to browse to. At any rate, the few unchecked boxes were all something besides Civil Contour Object.

It just seems funny that they would display one moment and not the next. Almost like AutoCAD is saying, "Yeah, they're there - but not really".