topic Flattening a drawing in AutoCAD Forum

Flattening a drawing

nickKBWRY — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 08:48:08 GMT

I've been sent a drawing to work on and what should be a flat plan view looks like this when 3DO is used. I'm trying to gauge areas and it's not happening.

Is there a way to universally make this drawing redraw at 0m Z-axis? this is how it should look in plan

There is no 'start z, end z' in properties to adjust so i'm at a loss...

File attached.

cheers

Re: Flattening a drawing

Anton_Huizinga — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 09:22:54 GMT

There is a FLATTEN command in AutoCAD. But if certain objects are from a vertical like Civil 3D, it probably does not flatten, unless you first explode such objects.

Re: Flattening a drawing

nickKBWRY — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 09:35:55 GMT

It wouldn't explode any further. It worked on a couple of lines, but not all...

Installing Civ3D to see if that helps...

Re: Flattening a drawing

Michiel.Valcke — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 09:42:24 GMT

select the objects you want to 'flatten' then use the MOVE command from 0,0,0 to 0,0,1e99. Then select the same objects again and move them from 0,0,1e99 to 0,0,0

It is an old school trick where you set the z-value to 1 time ten to the 99th power. This exceeds the bounds of what AutoCAD can do and as such effectively resets z-values to 0.

Re: Flattening a drawing

nickKBWRY — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 10:16:43 GMT

No joy, alas.

Re: Flattening a drawing

Michiel.Valcke — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 10:29:06 GMT

This is the result after the move to 1e99 trick. Only the 3D stairs remained an issue. So I used the flatshot command to create a 2D block of the stairs, placed them on the same x,y coordinates as the 3d model but kept the z-value to 0.

Depending on what you want to do, there will still be some cleanup necessary.