Grade to Distance Disappears and I Can't Recreate It

[jonathan]

I'm pulling my hair out over here and I hope that someone can help me.

I created a "grade to distance" in an area on my site--there are 7 in total.  When I first created this grading it worked perfectly--the surface was generated, the contours were spot-on, etc.  I then created another grade to distance and this one lost all of its information.  The gradings were still there (the diamonds were still present), but the grading was blank.  It didn't drop down to zero, etc.--it just made a huge hole in my grading.  I became so frustrated that I continued with a few more gradings and they work perfectly.  

I have deleted this grading, redid it, and there's still a hole.  I deleted the feature line I was using as the starting point and recreated it, still nothing.  I have closed the drawing and recovered it--zero errors every time--and it's still not working.  I've checked to make sure that every feature (feature lines, etc.) are in the same site and grading group, the surface is correct, etc.  I've tried a few other solutions I found via Google--nothing.  Hopefully someone can tell me what's going on--very frustrating!  Any helps and/or suggestions would be appreciated.

I've attached a picture of the object viewer with the big hole in the middle.  I'll be happy to upload the file, if needed.  It has a few dependencies (point file, etc.), so if someone needs it I assume I just create an etransmit file?  Thanks again.

P.S.  Not sure if this is helpful, but the area doesn't highlight when I try to do a simple infill.  The area is surrounded by two feature lines (ETW extracted from my corridors), but it's not seeing it as a valid infill option.

[Neilw_05]

I've had this happen a few times. Usually I am able to fix it with audits, recover, delete, recreate, etc. In those cases where I couldn't I had to resort to adding the FL as breaklines. Try audit till clean, close, recover, delete any residual objects, then repeat the cycle a couple of times. Also try moving the bad grading to a new site. You could try moving all the gradings to a new site which is risky.

There are other troubleshooting techniques out there such as opening in plain acad and deleting stuff, wblock, etc.

Always work in a copy of the file when troubleshooting until you are confident in a solution.

[jonathan]

Thanks for the reply!  I'll keep trying audit/recover and see if that does anything.  When you say "delete residual objects", am I looking for anything in particular?

I did figure out one issue that was causing the hole--I had my max triangle length set to 30 feet.  I turned it off for that surface and there's no longer a gaping hole, but the grading still isn't working.

Also--I have deleted and replaced the feature line a few times, and sometimes it show small triangles on the line.  From what I can gather from searching they must be split points.  However, nothing is crossing the feature line.  I just thought I'd mention this in case it was meaningful.

[Neilw_05]

Usually when a grading corrupts it dissolves into pieces of featurelines that are no longer functional to the grading. Daylight lines and projection lines are typical.

These will often be locked, meaning they can't be erased, unless the drawing is audited and all errors fixed. Sometimes you have to close and reopen the dwg to erase them. If the grading corrupts multiple times, you can end up with duplicate featurelines stacked on top of each other. Those will most certainly need to be erased or you will never get the dwg under control. If you have gradings all around a closed area, make sure those are intact and not corrupted. A simple check is to try editing their parameters to see if they respond. check those perimeter featurelines for any duplicates that may have been left over from corruptions.

[jonathan]

I checked and no duplicate lines/feature lines were created.  I have tried everything that I can think to try--I'm stumped.  I even tried adding the feature line to the surface as a breakline and everything went haywire.  It actually created the grading but went outside of the boundary and threw about 200 errors (all saying the breakline wasn't created because it crossed a point).  Soooo... I don't think that worked.  Every time I did anything causing a rebuild all of the errors would pop up again.

I just don't get how it created the grading and surface perfectly, and then when I graded another area entirely (not touching any part of that grading) it disappeared and I can't recreate it.  Very frustrating.

I guess I can grade that area by hand, but I've never graded an actual surface by hand before (other than in the old days where it wasn't really a surface--just lines you drew representing contours).  I guess my next step is to learn that.  I just need to move ahead past this grading nightmare so I can complete everything else (parcels, site layouts, erosion control, etc).  Whew.

[Neilw_05]

If you post your file (or a portion of it), I am willing to have a look.

[jonathan]

Thanks, Neil.  Do I create an eTransmit file?  Okay... the file is almost 40 MB (eTransmit).  I just realized I CAN upload it here... I'm attaching the file.

[Neilw_05]

Something is corrupt in the grading group. I don't know what. Creating a new grading group fixes it.

[jonathan]

Thanks!  Is it best to just create a new grading group and redo the gradings, or should I transfer the current gradings to a grading group?  I'll try both, but I didn't know if there's a "best practice".

UPDATE:  Weird... I changed the "bad" grading to a new grading group, and voila!  It worked.  I then copied the other gradings to the new grading group and the grading disappeared *again*.  I just move the "bad" grading to the old grading group and it came right back so I'll just have the two grading groups.  I would assume that will work just fine.

[Neilw_05]

I'll have another look later today. You can get by with the 2 groups as a workaround. Just paste the surfaces together somehow.

[jonathan]

You may notice in the drawing that I have a surface named "test surface".  I paste all of the grading surfaces into that surface to create an overall grading plan.  I simply pasted the new grading group surface into that surface.  

[Neilw_05]

After another look at your file I found the Eastern Road corridor is the culprit. I can't explain why, but if you end it before it crosses the east lane featureline of Primary Road, the grading surface builds properly. Speculating it is related to the extracted featurlines crossing each other.