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Sharing C3D drawings

23 REPLIES 23
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Message 1 of 24
Sinc
453 Views, 23 Replies

Sharing C3D drawings

Anyone have any experience sharing C3D drawings with other companies?

We finally got our first project completed by others in C3D. Judging from the lack of messages when opening their files, I'm guessing that the files were created (or at least last-used) in C3D 2008.

Except of course, the drawing that we got from them has none of our styles in it, so it is difficult for us to work in. And as is historically the case with Autocad drawings, we don't want to work directly in their drawings in any case.

Not to mention, they did everything in one file, so we have this huge giant file that is designed to create a 33-page plan set. We don't want all that overhead in the drawing we are using for construction calcs.

So we are trying to extract just the data we want into a new drawing. What we REALLY want to do is create a new drawing and use Map for this, but that doesn't work. I tried it, and there were horrendous errors everywhere before C3D unceremoniously crashed.

I also tried selecting the items I was interested in, and using COPY TO CLIPBOARD. This works fine for stuff I create, but not with this drawing. The copy operation acts like it works, but then when I try to paste the data into a new drawing, nothing happens. No error messages or anything - just an immediate return to the command prompt.

LandXML export/import is also a very undesireable option. There are some 30 alignments spread over six Sites, and in order to keep them in separate Sites, I apparently must export every Site separately. And of course, LandXML does not export any of the annotations or labels, which are very important.

Luckily, it looks like they did everything in one drawing, so there don't seem to be any Vault-created issues. But unfortunately, they did everything in one drawing, so the drawing is a giant mess. Therefore I don't simply want to insert their entire drawing into a new drawing created from our template.

I'm thinking I may get somewhere by taking their drawing, and trying to delete everything I'm not really interested in. Then, when I have done that, try to insert whatever is left into a new drawing created from our template.

But this whole process is striking me as being a complete mess. Anyone else dealt with it yet?
Sinc
23 REPLIES 23
Message 2 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

sinc:

Unfortunately, I cannot give any advice except to ask a question. A lot of
times I like to use NCOPY to get quick entities into my drawing from an XREF
but unfortunately NCOPY is a one "pickum" at a time. Would a "windowing"
version of NCOPY help in your case? I know it would speed things along for
me.

Bill

Civil 3D 2008, SP 2 &
(Civil 3D 2007, SP3, why I don't know)
Windows XP Pro, SP2
2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad @ 3.21 GHz
4 MB Ram ~Dual WD 150Gb 10K SATA Raid
Radeon X1950~512 MB
Message 3 of 24
BrianHailey
in reply to: Sinc

Sinc,

Are you using Vault? Perhaps if you add it to a project you can simply reference the objects you want and then promote them. I would do this rather than data shortcuts because you have to pick each and every object you want to data shortcut. Unfortunately, the labels won't come through with this method but it is something else to think about.

Brian

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 4 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

No, Vault creates too many problems, and we have decided we can't use it at this time.

From some of the dates I see, it looks as though this drawing was created in March of 2007. Therefore, they must have been using either 2006 or a beta of 2007 to create the drawing, and then it has been brought forward from there.

In the process, I think they got something screwed up. It seems to be impossible to WBLOCK, Copy, or otherwise get any Civil-3D entities out of this drawing. All of them look like they are doing something, but WBLOCK fails to create any file, and Copy to Clipboard fails to write anything to the clipboard. So it looks like something is corrupt in the drawing, although Audit fails to return any errors. So I don't think I would even want to try creating data references to this drawing.

And of course, even if I WERE to manage to somehow get data out of this drawing, there is the problem that all Text Overrides in Labels get reset as soon as I try to insert them into another drawing.

I'm thinking the best bet may be to use LandXML to get all the alignments and profiles out of the drawing, and import all of those into a fresh drawing. The same with the surface. I think those are the important things for construction calcs. For the rest, I'm thinking I'll just try to XREF their drawing in as a "dumb background", and hope that's good enough...

Boy, my initial joy at finally getting a drawing created in Civil-3D has sure evaporated quickly... I think this is still going to be easier than getting a "dumb old drawing", or (worse-yet) a converted DGN. But unfortunately, it still appears to be fraught with issues...
Sinc
Message 5 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

D'oh - if they started this drawing in March of 2007, I bet they WERE using C3D 2007 when they started this drawing, and not 2006... this "year in advance" thing really messes with my mind... 🙂

But in any case, there definitely appears to be problems in the drawing. It is also impossible to export it to Autocad. And everything is in this single drawing - there are no data shortcuts or vault references to blame.

Oh well, so far it looks like we'll be able to manage by using their drawing as an XREF. I'll find out as I get further into it...
Sinc
Message 6 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

Just FYI, I believe when you export to Autocad all the 3D elements will be
dropped to zero elevation so it won't do you much good for surface modeling.
You would be better off exploding everything. If you are just trying to
generate construction take offs you might get by with exploding and creating
your models from the pieces. Alignments and profiles could be imported via
XML for staking.


wrote in message news:5781506@discussion.autodesk.com...
D'oh - if they started this drawing in March of 2007, I bet they WERE using
C3D 2007 when they started this drawing, and not 2006... this "year in
advance" thing really messes with my mind... 🙂

But in any case, there definitely appears to be problems in the drawing. It
is also impossible to export it to Autocad. And everything is in this
single drawing - there are no data shortcuts or vault references to blame.

Oh well, so far it looks like we'll be able to manage by using their drawing
as an XREF. I'll find out as I get further into it...
Message 7 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

You realize what you are telling me to do, right?

You are telling me to take a C3D model and explode it, and then build a new C3D model from the pieces...

If that's the "standard practice" we have to look forward to, then many of the advertised gains of C3D are bupkiss...

I'm only hoping that this is a trashed drawing, created by someone who doesn't really know how to use C3D, and not typical of what we can expect... Of course, until there are a lot of highly-skilled C3D users out there, it probably IS typical of what we can expect...
Sinc
Message 8 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

Considering the objects aren't working for you, the options seem to be to
use XML or explode (export to Autocad will not give you what you need).
There are issues when sharing C3D between versions as you are finding out.
That is likely going to continue as the product evolves until Autodesk
develops a tool to convert the data between versions. For now a 2007 user
cannot work with 2008 objects and probably 2008 users will not be able to
work with 2009 objects.

wrote in message news:5781691@discussion.autodesk.com...
You realize what you are telling me to do, right?

You are telling me to take a C3D model and explode it, and then build a new
C3D model from the pieces...

If that's the "standard practice" we have to look forward to, then many of
the advertised gains of C3D are bupkiss...

I'm only hoping that this is a trashed drawing, created by someone who
doesn't really know how to use C3D, and not typical of what we can expect...
Of course, until there are a lot of highly-skilled C3D users out there, it
probably IS typical of what we can expect...
Message 9 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

Well sinc you know that as the Vertical products expand that collaboration requires a lot more trust than it used to.
If my firm had to send you files at this point they would probably be exported to 2004 in order to protect our investment in styles.
And don't take offense sinc, I know in this instance an exception could be made but I was making a point.
The early adopters, which is still everybody that has adopted,
are reluctant to share what their firm has created.
Time will change these circumstances but at this time that's what it looks like, at least to me.
Message 10 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

I haven't been messing with Copy/clip in a while because of the limitations
as well. I do recall a sage warning us to track dependencies with copy/clip.

I just tried this to confirm.

Alignments first. Only alignments. They come over pretty nice.

If you have a tough time with one, in the source, offset it 5' one way &
then 5' back, copy-clip into the new dwg & convert to alignment.

Profile views next. When I copy the profile view & paste into the new dwg,
low & behold, the EG tin comes for the ride. My FG came for the ride as well
but does not display. The FG was all Feature lines and they came across in
the copy as well so I could easily rebuild the surface.

I have not gone further the pipe networks & stuff but Copy/Clip can work
with some things.

By no means is this a cure all but it may help.


--
John Mayo, PE
Project Engineer
Conklin Associates
Ramsey, NJ

Civil 3D 2008, LDT 2008, Raster Design 2008
P-IV at 3.5 GHz
2 GB Ram
Nvidea Quadro FX w/ 128 MB Ram
wrote in message news:5781276@discussion.autodesk.com...
Anyone have any experience sharing C3D drawings with other companies?

We finally got our first project completed by others in C3D. Judging from
the lack of messages when opening their files, I'm guessing that the files
were created (or at least last-used) in C3D 2008.

Except of course, the drawing that we got from them has none of our styles
in it, so it is difficult for us to work in. And as is historically the
case with Autocad drawings, we don't want to work directly in their drawings
in any case.

Not to mention, they did everything in one file, so we have this huge giant
file that is designed to create a 33-page plan set. We don't want all that
overhead in the drawing we are using for construction calcs.

So we are trying to extract just the data we want into a new drawing. What
we REALLY want to do is create a new drawing and use Map for this, but that
doesn't work. I tried it, and there were horrendous errors everywhere
before C3D unceremoniously crashed.

I also tried selecting the items I was interested in, and using COPY TO
CLIPBOARD. This works fine for stuff I create, but not with this drawing.
The copy operation acts like it works, but then when I try to paste the data
into a new drawing, nothing happens. No error messages or anything - just
an immediate return to the command prompt.

LandXML export/import is also a very undesireable option. There are some 30
alignments spread over six Sites, and in order to keep them in separate
Sites, I apparently must export every Site separately. And of course,
LandXML does not export any of the annotations or labels, which are very
important.

Luckily, it looks like they did everything in one drawing, so there don't
seem to be any Vault-created issues. But unfortunately, they did everything
in one drawing, so the drawing is a giant mess. Therefore I don't simply
want to insert their entire drawing into a new drawing created from our
template.

I'm thinking I may get somewhere by taking their drawing, and trying to
delete everything I'm not really interested in. Then, when I have done
that, try to insert whatever is left into a new drawing created from our
template.

But this whole process is striking me as being a complete mess. Anyone else
dealt with it yet?
Message 11 of 24
Civil3DReminders_com
in reply to: Sinc

One can use Data Shortcuts and the promote command, it is not just limited to Vault.
Civil Reminders
http://blog.civil3dreminders.com/
http://www.CivilReminders.com/
Alumni
Message 12 of 24
Civil3DReminders_com
in reply to: Sinc

I haven't tried this in 2008, but this may be some help.

http://civil-3d.blogspot.com/2007/04/creating-data-shortcuts-with-one-button.html
Civil Reminders
http://blog.civil3dreminders.com/
http://www.CivilReminders.com/
Alumni
Message 13 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

That is my preferred method Chris.

Sinc, you didn't mention if you tried to insert the outside work into your
template as a block. It takes some time but I can insert our work into
canned acad templates.

--
John Mayo, PE
Project Engineer
Conklin Associates
Ramsey, NJ

Civil 3D 2008, LDT 2008, Raster Design 2008
P-IV at 3.5 GHz
2 GB Ram
Nvidea Quadro FX w/ 128 MB Ram
wrote in message news:5782125@discussion.autodesk.com...
One can use Data Shortcuts and the promote command, it is not just limited
to Vault.
Message 14 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

No, I've been trying to avoid that because there is just so darn much in this particular drawing. Like I said, they did EVERYTHING in one drawing, so it's a giant mess. I only want maybe half of the stuff in it. So I don't want to just insert their entire mess into one of my templates.

And of course they were probably fighting the normal lack of dependability in C3D, with regular crashes et al. And from the way they did many things, it looks like they're still pretty junior with C3D, so there's that going on as well. So who knows how many problems lie waiting in this drawing. I would really like to extract just the stuff I'm most-interested in, and get that stuff into a new drawing with a known history, so I feel somewhat better about my chances of having a drawing that will work for the entire project...

Even trying to selectively delete entities from the drawing until I'm left with only I want, and then inserting THAT into a template, has proven very less-than-promising. First off, it suffers the problem that all text overrides in labels get reset when doing this. That is a MAJOR issue. But second, if I try to select a lot of items at once and delete them, I get unpredictable results, because there are so many things in this drawing and it is so difficult to identify what is what. (We have no tools like we did with Layers, such as a Style Translator, or a Prospector Walk, to make it easier to figure out what is what.) So it looks like it would have to be a surgical process, where I delete things one-by-one until it looks like I have only what I want. There is so much stuff in this drawing that that process would take quite some time. But then, after doing all that, I still have the problem of all text overrides being reset when I insert them into my new drawing...

I'm still not sure on the best way to proceed. Luckily, this job is mostly alignments and corridors, so I don't have many feature lines to worry about. And alignments and corridors can be transfered in halfway-decent fashion using LandXML. So I still think using a combination of LandXML export and XREF is the easiest. I might be able to use Data Shortcuts, too, but this drawing seems to have so many problems in it that I'm loath to use it actively for anything. I'm hoping that by using it only as a dumb XREF, I won't run into any issues.

LandXML is still not the right tool, though. Since it fails to export styles, or associated labels, and it loses the Site relationships, it leaves MUCH to be desired. What we DESPERATELY need is another tool, that makes it easy to query items out of other drawings. You know, it actually seems like I've used a tool like that before... I can't quite remember what it was called... Something like Manic... no, Mahap... No, it was MAP! Yeah, that was the name of that nifty tool that used to work so well... We called it MAP! Whatever happened to that nifty tool? 😞

It's a giant mess, I tells ya.... 😞
Sinc
Message 15 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

Yeah, I think protecting Styles as IP is a net losing situation for everyone involved, but I understand why you think that way.

I think it will change as we move forward. First off, I'm hoping that Autodesk will make SIGNIFICANT progress in style management, so it doesn't take anywhere near as much time to create them.

But second, as more people get more involved in using C3D, they will get their own library of styles built up. The more they work with C3D, the more of their own styles they will have created, and the less-attractive your styles will be. They still might "steal" some Styles out of your drawing, but they will probably still need to modify them to make them look like their existing styles. So they won't be gaining a whole lot by using your Styles.

And I suppose that we view things differently than your company. We have no fear at all that others will steal our styles. In fact, if they do, that just means that if we ever get any drawings back from them, their drawings will look much like ours. From what I've been discovering so far, getting a drawing with unfamiliar styles is a HUGE potential timesink, so if everyone local basically adopted our company's styles as their default, I think it would actually make our lives MUCH easier in the long run. (Especially since we use STBs, and it's annoying getting C3D files containing styles that are designed for the less-capable CTBs...)

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, so I forsee it being a battle every time we get C3D drawings from a new company, and have to try and figure out how their drawings are all pieced together.
Sinc
Message 16 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

Your paving the road here Sinc. The best way is yet to be discovered. 🙂

I think I would insert it into my template. When I need an alignment I would
open that dwg, assign my style to the object in question, create the
reference & then promote it in my working files.


--
John Mayo, PE
Project Engineer
Conklin Associates
Ramsey, NJ

Civil 3D 2008, LDT 2008, Raster Design 2008
P-IV at 3.5 GHz
2 GB Ram
Nvidea Quadro FX w/ 128 MB Ram
wrote in message news:5782283@discussion.autodesk.com...
No, I've been trying to avoid that because there is just so darn much in
this particular drawing. Like I said, they did EVERYTHING in one drawing,
so it's a giant mess. I only want maybe half of the stuff in it. So I
don't want to just insert their entire mess into one of my templates.

And of course they were probably fighting the normal lack of dependability
in C3D, with regular crashes et al. And from the way they did many things,
it looks like they're still pretty junior with C3D, so there's that going on
as well. So who knows how many problems lie waiting in this drawing. I
would really like to extract just the stuff I'm most-interested in, and get
that stuff into a new drawing with a known history, so I feel somewhat
better about my chances of having a drawing that will work for the entire
project...

Even trying to selectively delete entities from the drawing until I'm left
with only I want, and then inserting THAT into a template, has proven very
less-than-promising. First off, it suffers the problem that all text
overrides in labels get reset when doing this. That is a MAJOR issue. But
second, if I try to select a lot of items at once and delete them, I get
unpredictable results, because there are so many things in this drawing and
it is so difficult to identify what is what. (We have no tools like we did
with Layers, such as a Style Translator, or a Prospector Walk, to make it
easier to figure out what is what.) So it looks like it would have to be a
surgical process, where I delete things one-by-one until it looks like I
have only what I want. There is so much stuff in this drawing that that
process would take quite some time. But then, after doing all that, I still
have the problem of all text overrides being reset when I insert them into
my new drawing...

I'm still not sure on the best way to proceed. Luckily, this job is mostly
alignments and corridors, so I don't have many feature lines to worry about.
And alignments and corridors can be transfered in halfway-decent fashion
using LandXML. So I still think using a combination of LandXML export and
XREF is the easiest. I might be able to use Data Shortcuts, too, but this
drawing seems to have so many problems in it that I'm loath to use it
actively for anything. I'm hoping that by using it only as a dumb XREF, I
won't run into any issues.

LandXML is still not the right tool, though. Since it fails to export
styles, or associated labels, and it loses the Site relationships, it leaves
MUCH to be desired. What we DESPERATELY need is another tool, that makes it
easy to query items out of other drawings. You know, it actually seems like
I've used a tool like that before... I can't quite remember what it was
called... Something like Manic... no, Mahap... No, it was MAP! Yeah,
that was the name of that nifty tool that used to work so well... We called
it MAP! Whatever happened to that nifty tool? 😞

It's a giant mess, I tells ya.... 😞
Message 17 of 24
JeffPaulsen
in reply to: Sinc

Sinc,

We've had problems with corrupt drawings corrupting other drawings even when xrefed, mostly due to regapps but who knows what else might transfer over. You may consider plotting their drawing to DWF and using an underlay.
Jeff Paulsen
Civil 3D 2020.4 | Win 10 Pro N 64-bit
Xeon W-2223 @ 3.60GHz, 32GB Ram | NVidia Quadro P2200
Message 18 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

You know, I'm thinking I may just try using the One-Touch-Reference creator that Chris mentioned, and create data references in a new drawing. Then I'll promote all the data references, and see if that works.

If not, I'll try inserting their file into one of mine, and see if I can do the same sort of process there.

As a side note, I have now managed to get the drawing to export to Autocad, although I'm not quite sure what I might have done that made it possible now. But anyway, now that I have a drawing exported to 2007, I have labels converted to normal text, and I can work with them without seeing the text overrides get reset. And of course, I've gotten away from needing to directly using the questionable drawing I received from the others.

So if I can get live alignments, profiles, and surfaces in a brand-new drawing, and then use my Export as a background XREF, I'm hoping that will work out well enough for what I need to do... I think it will.

Now if this was a drawing that had feature lines and grading objects everywhere, this wouldn't be as nice a solution. But this drawing doesn't seem to have any of those, so in this particular case, I'm hoping it will work.
Sinc
Message 19 of 24
Anonymous
in reply to: Sinc

Please by all means keep us up to date.

The vault would be faster but I would wonder if their styles would come
through & what referenced blocks, lines, layers, etc. may wind up in your
dwg's. I have used Vault on one project & forget if you can assign new
styles at the time of import.


--
John Mayo, PE
Project Engineer
Conklin Associates
Ramsey, NJ

Civil 3D 2008, LDT 2008, Raster Design 2008
P-IV at 3.5 GHz
2 GB Ram
Nvidea Quadro FX w/ 128 MB Ram
wrote in message news:5782356@discussion.autodesk.com...
You know, I'm thinking I may just try using the One-Touch-Reference creator
that Chris mentioned, and create data references in a new drawing. Then
I'll promote all the data references, and see if that works.

If not, I'll try inserting their file into one of mine, and see if I can do
the same sort of process there.

As a side note, I have now managed to get the drawing to export to Autocad,
although I'm not quite sure what I might have done that made it possible
now. But anyway, now that I have a drawing exported to 2007, I have labels
converted to normal text, and I can work with them without seeing the text
overrides get reset. And of course, I've gotten away from needing to
directly using the questionable drawing I received from the others.

So if I can get live alignments, profiles, and surfaces in a brand-new
drawing, and then use my Export as a background XREF, I'm hoping that will
work out well enough for what I need to do... I think it will.

Now if this was a drawing that had feature lines and grading objects
everywhere, this wouldn't be as nice a solution. But this drawing doesn't
seem to have any of those, so in this particular case, I'm hoping it will
work.
Message 20 of 24
Sinc
in reply to: Sinc

OK, I tried the CreateAlignmentShortcuts et al. methods. The Alignments and Surfaces came through just fine, but the Profiles went MIA... This also has the issue that, in the new drawing, I need to create individual references for each object to get them actually in the new drawing. And, just like LandXML Export, this method loses all Site information, which garbled the alignments for me. True, I could eventually sort through them all, and eventually get everything created on the correct Site in my new drawing, but it's a bit of a mess. And there was that pesky issue with Profile shortcuts not working for some reason...

So I decided to try another route. This time, I went into the source drawing, and exported each of the three main Sites to a separate LandXML file. Each of these three Sites had a Corridor associated with the alignments in it, so I also exported the corresponding Corridor with each XML export. I also added the EG surface to one of the LandXML esports. This worked. Of course, there's the issue that LandXML Export to directories on the server is INCREDIBLY SSSSLLLOOOWWWW, but it eventually gets the job done.

In the new drawing, I was able to then create three Sites, and import each of the three LandXML files to a separate Site. This successfully got all my Alignments, Profiles, Corridors, and Surfaces into my new drawing - or at least, I think it did. Looks good so far. The annoying thing here is that all elements that were imported via LandXML come in with the default styles applied, so I then had to go around and adjust styles for various things. Also, we use the Object Layer Settings to put our Alignments on a new layer that contains the Alignment Name, and this does not happen when importing Alignments via LandXML. And of course, all the ancillary labels are missing. But since I managed to get a successful "Export to 2007", I can take that file, and use it as a "dumb background" via XREF.

So I think I'm set to go. The really nice part is that we can stake most of this job straight from the alignments, profiles, and corridors, which we can dump straight into our data collectors. So while I spent a number of hours dinking with C3D and trying various routes before I found something that seems to be working, I think I'll still end up spending a lot less time on calcs than if I had nothing but "dumb" linework and a set of plans.

If Map worked with C3D so that data extraction was easy, and we had some tools like a "Style Translator" - or better yet, a full-featured "Style Management System" - this would actually be pretty slick. Maybe one of these years... 🙂
Sinc

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