My feature lines have dissapeared.

[Anonymous]

Can anybody help with the issue of disappearing feature lines?

I spent days creating a surface from grading feature lines and adding them as brake lines only for them to disappear. Whilst the feature lines are still showing through tool space, they are not actually in the drawing. If you do a surface re-build, it disappears due to there being no feature lines for it to build from.

This happened to me all the time when I was running Civil 3D 2010. Since swapping to 2011 I hadn't, until today, had this problem. 

I don't want to have to re  draw all the feature lines for obvious reasons, so does anyone out there know if there is a fix to this problem? 

Please please please please please someone give me a lifeline.

Cheers

[ericmorris2151]

I think you are likely screwed, but, you could try right clicking on the feature lines though prospector and select "insert into drawing".  Chances are that won't work either though.  I keep lots of backups for this reason... 

[jmayo-EE]

If you have the FLines in a surface you can try to export the surface to an xml file and the reimport the surface into a new dwg.

When you import, make sure the LandXML Settings are set for Full Import. If this works your feature lines will import as 3d polylines.

If the FLines are not in a surface I would try to use QS to select them all. Even if they don't appear they may select. Try the above.

[_Hathaway]

Excuse my ignorance, but are feature lines and survey figures identical?  Are the classified as the same style of entitiy?  We've had the problem of disappearing survey figures in the past and it sounds exactly like the situation with the feature lines you are describing.  We could see the lines in the preview but upon opening the dwg the figures aren't there. 

We haven't been able to identify the source of the issue but have managed to work around it.  DO NOT PURGE at all, period, there were known issues with purging of unnamed objects resulting in survey figures dissappeaing (albeit at a later date/time, not when you actually do the purge.   Lock the layer as soon as your done with it, not sure if that is even feasible with feature lines.  After we implemented those 2 items we have not had our figures disappear on us, prior to that they disappeared almost nightly. 

Something is not right when we have to resort to these measures just to ensure our work is not lost.

[Kyle-Evans]

Apparently Autodesk has yet to fix this. How wonderful. This "issue" has been going on since 2008 and I have lost many many man hours of work due to it.

How about you FIX YOUR PROGRAM BUGS before you RELEASE NEW SOFTWARE VERSIONS...... Or cut the price of the product due to us being Beta Testers.

[Joe-Bouza]

restore the shadow copy from your server

[jupiter0110]

Wish I had a solution to this issue but I'm having the same problem as everyone else. Our company holds several subscriptions to Civil 3D as well as other Autodesk platforms and we are currently awaiting the upgrade to Release 2012.

Working in my last two projects I had this problem happen. Hey, if its something I'm doing, fine! I would just like to know what it is that I am doing to cause it. If it is an Autodesk programming issue, then they need to get busy in resolving it.  This is a MAJOR problem to have to deal with in the business world. For the price we pay for the program and the frequency that Autodesk has forced the public to upgrade to stay current, this isn't a problem they can take their time in resolving. If this has been an ongoing issue since 2008, then shame on Autodesk.

[mathewkol]

If you restore yesterday's backup they should still be there. A pain, yes, but you shouldn't have to redo everything. Also check BAK and possible autosave files.

[_Hathaway]

That never worked for us Mathewk.  We were rendered almost completely inoperable with Civil3d2010 due to this constant reoccurring issue, it was a complete waste of our time and lost thousands.

With that said 2012 seems to have solved that problem, it was still painful though.

[mathewkol]

Wow! Good that 2012 seems to be better.

[jmayo-EE]

Did you try the xml trick above? It has saved me a few times but I have not had this happen often or recently.

[silvernich]

John,

This idea was super helpful. Now, years later I am working on a troublesome drawing. I created it in C3D 2013 and now am continuing the design. It got to a point that it wouldn't save the file and grading lines were dissapearing (although I could quick select them).

Anyways, I tried your idea of landxml export and then import into a fresh file. This seems to work.

Thanks alot, as I was beating my head against the wall. Also, I am concerned about using files that were previously created in an earlier version, unless I am just paranoid.

- Nich

[jmayo-EE]

HTH 🙂

[joesmoe19]

Tried you suggestion to click "insert into drawing: from the prospector in ACAD 2018.  Just got an error " breakline not inserted".  Good thought thou.

[Kyle-Evans]

This most recently happened to one of my students. It happens one or two times per school year. Unfortunately I was not monitoring them closely as to what they were doing, but the student admitted to me that they have been using the undo command a LOT, especially when working with Featurelines. I attributed the disappearing feature lines to them using undo. However it has not happened to me in about 5-6 years, however in 2019 the issue is still present. It may at this point be user related though. 

[drenaud]

Go to Site, Grading Groups, right-click on the named grading group and Select. You can change the style of the grading and the feature lines in Properties. I'm not positive, but once a feature line has been graded I think it assumes the style of the grading object. i.e. _NoDisplay will hide it.