AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas on this: I am looking for a better way to get my 3D Faces from a surface into a DXF. Note: I need to have 3D Faces in a DXF as it is the only way my data collector will accept them. My current process is 1)export surface to a XML 2) open new drawing and import XML 3)make the surface style only display triangles 4)extract triangles from surface 5)change my surface style to no display 6)save drawing as a DXF. I don't like to extract the triangles from the original drawing because I am often making adjustments to the surface and then the old extracted triangles and still hanging around in the drawing. I don't want that. Looking to see if it would be possible to record a macro(or some other automated procedure) that would allow me to extract triangles as save them in a new DXF from a selected surface all in one step. Any input would help. Thanks

[#2]

Well, in my opinion the fastest method is to explode the TIN surface, saving that bunch of 3Dfaces as .DXF, finally close Autocad without saving the DWG, sir.

[#3]

The way I extract anything form a surface is to make sure it shows up in the surface style display, then select the surface I want to extract objects from and C3D will take you to a ribbon where there is a command to extract objects.

In this case make sure the surface style is displaying the triangles. Extract just the triangles. Then turn off the triangles in the surface style display so you can see that they are extracted from the surface.

Make sure nothing else is selected and then select one of the triangles, then right-click on the selected triangle and use Select Similar to select all of the triangles, then use windows copy to clipboard; open a new file and paste to original coordinates in the new file, save the new file as a dxf in whatever format you require.

[#4]

You can also review [this] from help.

Allen

[#5 · Accepted solution]

After the select similar you could also WBlock directly to a DXF file.

Allen

[#6]

Great minds... this is precisely what I told him in the thread he started over at AUGI.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?142716-Looking-for-a-better-way-to-extract-3D-faces-from-surfa...

[#7]

This does seem to be my preferred choice. I am having a maybe unrelated catch when I go to open the DXF I saved. I get the error as shown in the attachment and am not allowed to view the file. I can't remember if this is a setting issue or what. 

[#8]

In C3D 2012 SP 2.1 I can DXFIN or Open the file created from WBlocking the 3D faces. So I don't know what is causing your problem.

You could try getting the surface in a file by itself and use the ExportToAutoCAD2010Dxf command.

Allen