What's the best way to Fix Drawings witn Non coplaner Objects?

[sovby]

We get drawings from a client & alot of the entities are in either a positive or negative direction from a zero z coordinate. Some are lines which have end points that are on the wrong z plane & some have the whole object on the wrong z plane. I know there is the flatten command but what's the best way to deal with this? We do not draw in 3d & we get alot of drawings where we try to fillet two lines & we get a message that the two lines are not coplaner

[Anonymous]

Hi

You can use the 'flatshot' command but i personally prefer to select all lines using 'quick select' and filter out all the lines in the drawing then in the properties toolbar change the Z values to '0'

It a method I prefer using but it’s up to you.

Regards

[3wood]

Once you flatten the drawing with FLATTEN command, set OSNAPZ to 0, which ensure all new objects are on the right Z coordinate.

BTW, why FLATTEN doesn't work for you?

[Anonymous]

Just got use to do it that way... sometimes have contours in drawings so just got stuck like that i guess...

And I dislike people working in lines so alway use to flatten the lines and convert to polylines.

[sovby]

Correct me if im wrong but doesnt flatten explode any blocks? Also some of these methods dont always work. I am just wondering if there is anything that i have not heard of that might work. One thing we found was a block was on the right z plane but inside the block the entities were not. We spend way too much time fixing other people's stuff. Some of the drawings we get are AEC walls, windows etc. so thats one of the reasons we get stuff in the wrong z plane. Its a problem for us because it drives our users crazy when they find stuff on the wrong z plane when they should be spending their time drafting

[Anonymous]

If you want to blocks to remain intact i would open them, flatten and then run overkill to remove double lines.

[sovby]

I have not heard of flatshot so maybe i will give that a try. Sometimes even know in the properties it says the entity is set to zero it still appears to be wrong. When we change to a front view we still see lines that are not in the z plane. At least part of the line is not in the z plane. One end of the line might be at zero & the other end is not. Also sometimes when you set an entity to zero it appears to vanish i guess because part of it originated from another place on the x or y coordinate. In other words sometimes you get results you were not expecting.

[sovby]

yeah. i guess we are stuck with that. Its very time consuming but thats the problem when you have to use other peoples stuff.

[Anonymous]

If a line with 2 diffirent Z values is changed to a polyline and its elevation changed, it changes in that objects work plane and not the local plane.

So when selecting all lines in the drawing make sure you set both Z values to 0... thus start-z and end-z

[Anonymous]

play with the 'flatten" command and run "overkill" to remove double line. it goes quite quick.

Let me know of the result.

[JoAnn_Hogan]

Hi There,

Ok so just to clear something up.

Flatshot: Creates a block from a 3D model. Depending how you are looking at the model. so Flatshot wont quite do what you want it to do.

Have a look at this link: http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/AutoCAD/enu/community/Videos/Flat_Shot

Flatten: Flatten does not always place everything you have on the Z-0 Elevation. Sometimes you have a block inside of a block that also needs to be flatten, so you will have to go to each block aswell and do the flatten inside of the blocks.

Properties. This is the method I normally use to change the elevation. Use your Viewcube and look at your drawing from the front. Then select everything not on the Z-0 Elevation and change the properties to 0.

So basically using a combination of flatten and properties you should get this sorted in no time.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for helping to clear it up Jo-Ann

Flatshot was a bit of a typo... my bad...