Exporting Civil3D 2010 drawings to LDD

[tinakae]

Good afternoon all recovering LDD users. How are you all handling the export of Civil3D 2010 drawings to a usable in LDD drawing? I understand that you have to export and not save as. My issue is that when you export all civil3d objects are exploded down to a simple line. They also do not hold arc information, but turns them into little line seqments. How is everyone dealling with this or do you all not see it as an issue?

Thank You
Tina Clark
tinac@sgm-inc.com

[ctbailey]

The OP is concerned with data interoperability back to Land Desktop. They aren't asking about how to display figures as 2D or 3D.

Let's try and be "Civil" in our dealings with the forum.

I have proposed a workable solution that solves the problem, albeit the original poster doesn't like it because it is a brute force approach.

craig

[ronm]

Craig

You are correct that your solution handles the situation. I just wish you didn't have to pick each one individually. We sometimes have over 5 miles of existing conditions and having to pick each one and change the elevation would be time intensive. It is better then nothing. Thank you again.

[Anonymous]

EXTRACT2D - A command in the SincpacC3D. With this command you can extract
as many as you'd like at once and would likely pay for itself rather
quickly. Then if you throw in all the other Surveyor-friendly commands in
Sincpac, you surveyors may actually learn to like C3D.

www.sincpac3d.com

wrote in message news:6371634@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Craig
>
> You are correct that your solution handles the situation. I just wish you
> didn't have to pick each one individually. We sometimes have over 5 miles
> of existing conditions and having to pick each one and change the
> elevation would be time intensive. It is better then nothing. Thank you
> again.

[stacy.dunn]

A work a round for this is to create a surface at zero elevation surrounding them and change the figure elevations using the feature line "Elevations from surface" tool. Then, when you explode the figures, they will retain their curves. If you need them again, they are still in the survey database.

[martyjj1981]

i mean that is a great idea but what happens when u have a 10 mile survey with figures and other C3D items in it that need to be in a deliverable of LDD 2007 with figures and other C3D 2010 Objects exploding also the surface does not hold true when u down grade your drawing to 2007LDD. i have exported XML verisons 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 into LDD several times and come up with the same result. one my defined boundary in 2010 does not hold in LDD no matter what verison and at that the surface retains the information from the point group not the boundary i defined in 2010. two i can fix all the triangles that jump out of my area i want to define as a suface 2000 feet to the next point that is it is near. is there a step i am missing? do i need to drop all my c3d objects into 2008c3d then open ldd and continue with the suface?

[stacy.dunn]

Instead of thinking saving a drawing down I typically look at downgrading a survey as a two part process. One part is to export data via xml and the other is saving down the autocad drawing.

Surfaces:
You are correct in that surfaces don't transfer cleanly. I typically include the boundary as a 3dpoly line with the autocad entities to be added to the xml surface in LDD. If you do alot of edits to get the surface to look right, you may look at building it off of extracted triangles instead of xml data.

Figures:
As for the survey figures, you can export a fbk file from the figures section in the survey database. This file can then be imported in LDD to re-create the figures. Another option is to explode them to polylines and add them to LDD.

Parcels and Points:
I typically don't have problems with the xml data.

[martyjj1981]

Surfaces,

when i export the 3dpoly out then xml the surface out. then go to redefine the boundary and import the xmle into a ldd drawing i go to redefine the boundary and it seems that the vertices or points move enough in one direction especially along arcs and curves and splines just because of the difference in verison's of autocad 2010 and ldd 2008-2007 to cause my triangles along the border to get cut and move the tin boundary 25 feet in/out and to the vertice in the triaglation. there a patch to fix this? also i created a boundary that was from node to node that was outside my limits of my corridor as well in 2010 then imported it into ldd. then i tryed redefining the same boundary and i got the same result it still cut the triangles that i did nto wnat it to cut along my border its almost like there is a tranlations error in the reading of the vertice(x,y,z) information in the xml coming from 2010. i have tried using drawing elements as well such as contours, triangles and so on, i have tried to do every possible method i could think of and have always come back to the same result the only think i have not done is export the xml out with points and a surface. i guess in short the only way to really define your surface that is going to be exported out has to be within your point group. i have also tried extracting triangles as well and i have had the same result maybe its setting with my computer or cad program but this has become a truely frustrating problem and has cause our job to become overdue.i guess exporting this project into LDD became more evident that this process needs to be a fourth thougth than an after thought, and is there a size limitation to how much informtion u can jam into a drawing? i mean we have one continous surface for 9 miles? what limits would u set for a surface/survey network? 2 miles i have done that before and never had a problem

Annotation

we have alot of problems with text especially with multileaders exploding and become a quick leader with mutlitext this is less of problem that making sure that the Survey Work and Surface is Correct but how do u solve that issue?

Survey

is there size limitation on the Survey network databases i seem to remember that or heard that they said u can go up to (10mb) and then after it starts freaking out well in this drawing the Cad tech Stuffed (18mb) into the database and has cause alot of unneccessy errors to pop up and causing the computer to crash and etc. exporting the fbk file out does that hold all the spline commands and curves that work in 2010 in ldd? Edited by: martyjj1981 on May 15, 2010 3:10 AM

[stacy.dunn]

What are the unit settings for the Civil 3D drawing, Transformation settings, Survey Database and XML settings. The triangle discrepancies sound like something is getting scaled on export.

When I export a surface, I simply export XML and a 3dpoly for the boundary. The resultant surface in LDD is almost identical to the Civil 3d version. I have not had the problems that you are describing.

[martyjj1981]

saturday i checked all my settings and they are identical both in ldd and c3d there was no scalling issues. then i decided to exclude all the points outside my boundary and shorten my maxium triangle length to 200 ft and this seems to cure my problem of triangles showing up outside the boundary. Are these some of the steps u take when trying to produce a deliverable xml to a client? what would be a recommonded procedure tranfering civil 3d down to ldd and xml? what do u do to fix all annotation that is done in c3d and disappears when u save it as a 2004ldd verison?

[stacy.dunn]

Once I import the xml into LDD, I add the boundary and the outer triangles are fixed. I don't have the problem you are talking about.

When exporting regular autocad entities, I will explode mleaders to mtext.

[tinakae]

Good morning all;

After lots and lots of drama in our office we have found that the only workable way to deal with these very unsurvey friendly survey figures is to us the 2DEXTRACT command that comes with the SINCPAC-C3D software. http://www.ejsurveying.com/sincpacc3d.aspx I just don't see any other workable way to deal with this. It's sad but true. Hopefully Autodesk will look into adding such feature to there own software.

Tina Clark
tinac@sgm-inc.com Edited by: tinakae on May 22, 2010 4:39 PM

[C3D_RickGraham]

Something else to keep in mind when you do the File SaveAs - if you have mtext with background on, the text will be separated from the background. The background will appear as a solid rectangle with color of 250. You won;t see it in model space, but you will in paper space. I can't tell you how many people I've told about this caveat and they still sent the the drawings out that way only for me to receive a 'nastygram'.

Rick