AutoCAD Civil 3D

[#1]

Has anyone else noticed a problem with offsetting polylines in 2013?  I constantly have polylines that when I try to offset them I get the "Cannot offset that object", yet it shows a preview of the object as if it was offset.  

This isn't consistant and I haven't found anything to duplicate it every time.  But it happens on polylines that have arcs in them most of the time.  This is very frustrating when trying to offset the edge of pavement in order to get face of curb and back of curb.

I have attached a sample of one that is causing me issues.  Just to make sure it wasn't my template, I took the 2012 out-of-the-box acad.dwt and pasted the polyline in question into it, then saved as a 2013 dwg.  Try to offset it 0.5 to the inside and it won't work. If you try the outside, you'll get the preview of it, but it still won't offset.  This is a simple polyline with two lines and two arcs.  I've never had this kind of problem from any version of Autocad since R12 like I have with 2013.

I can explode the polyline and offset each individual part, but when you're dealing with around 50 polylines and probably close to 500+ lines & arcs, this becomes a huge problem.

[#2]

Remove the vertex at the mid point of the line and the pline will offset.

[#3]

As John mentioned, remove the in-line vertex. For some reason, Autodesk changed how AutoCAD offsets polylines. I saved the drawing as a R2010 format and was able to offset it fine in 2010, but in 2012 & 2013 that vertex must be removed in order to offset.

[#4]

Odd huh? Even though the vertex is redundant it shouldn't effect the offset geometry. I mean even if you removed the end tangent the resulting curve still fits/computes. Better yet, remove the last vertex and leave the shorter tangent. Try the offset command and the error icon appears but the offset is created.

[#5]

One more thing to note is that offsetting issues due to large coordinates did not seem to ba an issue with this.

[#6]

Thanks for looking it it for me.  That would be a solution to this one polyline, but what about all my other ones?  I don't have time to track down which vertex of every polyline is causing the offset command to fail.  I've just been exploding the polyline and just offsetting every single piece of it in order to get it to work.  

Basically, 2013 is costing us more money doing mundane edits that previous versions didn't require simply because Autodesk changed something that worked before with no issues.

[#7]

Have you opened an SR with Autodesk?

Allen

[#8]

Maybe try the C3D stepped offset command instead of AutoCAD's offset.

[#9]

---

AllenJessup wrote:

Have you opened an SR with Autodesk?

Allen

---

Not sure what good it will do.  I can't reproduce it intentionally.  I guess I could try and see what happens.

I attached another DWG that has the previous edge of pavement as well as a curb island that's farther north for this same project.  Look at what happens when you offset the closed polyline that's up north by 0.5' for the back of curb.  It makes two polylines in the upper right corner that don't even match the original!

This is what is causing me so much headache.

[#10]

---

mathewk wrote:
Maybe try the C3D stepped offset command instead of AutoCAD's offset.

---

It still does the thing. I thought of that, too, when I started having this issue.