Elevations from Blocks

[josh.bonora]

Hello all,

I have a survey provided by a client in the form of a series of contour lines displayed as blocks, about 10500 of them i.e each block is a part of a contour. The blocks themselves have no elevations or z values and if i explode them they become polylines again with no elevations of course. They do however have an attribute for each block called an 'autocad_elevation' which has a value, possibly created by the client using some other form of software. My main question is, is there a way to transfer the values of this attribute to the z values of the block? I could than either add the blocks to the surface using the add drawing objects or just explode them and add the polylines as breaklines.

I have already tried the 'moveblockstoattribelev' command but it seems i can only do one at a time. Like i said there is about 10500 of them all named different blocks. I have seen some other posts on here looks like people have had similar problems and have ended up using lisp routines and such but havent yet gotten any to work on mine. I am currently using Civil3D 2013. The file is quite large but would be able to upload a sample if required. We have already requested an alternate form of survey but wouldnt mind knowing if this could be done anyway.

Thanks

Josh

[antoniovinci]

Could you upload a sample, better if _WBLOCKed as 2004 release..?

[BrianHailey]

Most likely the attribute is not being displayed in the drawing (i.e. it's invisible). If that's the case, set ATTDISP to ON. Next, use the command, "MOVEBLOCKSTOATTRIBELEV". It can be found on the Surface contextual ribbon tab.

Once completed, set ATTDISP back to Normal if you changed it earlier.

Explode and create your surface!

[josh.bonora]

I am pretty sure the attribute is already visible, like i said in the post i already tried the 'move blocks to attributee elevation' command. My problem with that command is that i can only do one at a time! i.e i am prompted to then select a block reference name or pick a block from the dwg. I have 10500 SEPARATE blocks as contour lines in the dwg, so im not going to do them one at a time. Unless there is a way that command can be applied to multiple blocks i dont think it can help me. I will upload a sample with a few of the blocks.

[Jeff_M · Accepted solution]

Here is a simple, but usable, lisp that will explode the blocks, set the resulting polyline(s) to the elevation of the attribute, and finally delete the original blocks. It does no error checking so be sure to select just the blocks you want to use.

 Just save the lisp, load it using APPLOAD, and run using the command "multi_blks_to_attribute_elevation"

[josh.bonora]

Thanks Jeff, that worked brilliantly and was just what i needed. Cheers

[KPerison]

Jeff,

I have a similar issue as the original poster. Except I have multiple dwgs of survey Cogo points with multiple attributes including Pnt#, Elev, Dec, Note, Name, Code.  The original ASCII file is no where to be found.  

Each Cogo point block is visually identical except each block has an incremented name (ie: Point1,Point2,....Point305,... etc) I need to move these blocks insertion Z coordinate to the value of attribute tag ELEV.  I have been using the "MOVEBLOCKSTOATTRIBELEV" command, but it only works on one block name at a time.

I've been trying several other lisp routines, but haven't been able to crack this nut so far.  

Is there a way to use the "MOVEBLOCKSTOATTRIBELEV" command on mutiple block names that all have the specified attribute Tag?

Sample file included.

Thoughts?

Regards,

Kelly

[Jeff_M]

Kelly,

Attached is a small lisp that should accomplish this for you. Note that it will likely crap out if teh ELEV attribute has anything other than a number value, but otherwise should be fine.

Jeff

[KPerison]

Jeff,

Thank you very much!

Your posts to these discussion groups are always useful and informative.

Can't say how many times you've pulled me out of the ditch with your solutions. 

I guess thats why you've got 1400 Kudos and 1000 solutions!

This community is awsome. Always willing to help.

Kelly

[neilyj666]

@Jeff_M  is the "go to guy" for this type of thing and he always comes up with a solution.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting. This LISP would work for me as well, but my blocks have 3 attributes. Is there a way to modify this LISP to pull the elevation from a specific attribute tag?

[Jeff_M]

@Anonymous, the lisp I posted does exactly that. It searches all of the attributes in a block looking for one with the ELEV tag. If your block uses a different Tagstring, just edit the lisp and replace the ELEV with yours.

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

[aes.caldas]

Thanks for the LISP and the info about the ELEV tag. It saved me a lot of time!

[nonofthem]

Dear,

i have autocad file which contains attributes and i want to extract x y and z values to use in cad civil 3d

please any lisp or other solution 

[neilyj666]

Simple Data Extraction will work - although X and Y may need to be modified to suit your coordinate system (I suspect they are shown in mm not m)

[neilyj666]

and with screencast - https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/41ad97c7-3059-43d0-bf80-a61686d7eded