topic Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views in AutoCAD Forum

Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 10:24:20 GMT

Hello,

I have been trying to find a solution on this topic for a very long time so i would be immensely grateful for your assistance.

I have a set of points originating from survey data. When imported into autocad they appear as they should, where both points and their respective number tags appear appropriately. The software automatically generates each survey point as a block, which includes a point entity and a text box with the numeric identity of that point. See the attached images to see what top plan view looks like when initially imported.

However, when i attempt to align these points to a section plane or elevation (perpendicular to the view orientation of the original view), i am no longer able to view the numbers or the points themselves. They all appear flat and hence are unidentifiable. I have to go to far lengths manipulating the original dataset in order to rotate things around using cartesian methods so that the numbers can become visible again and it is a real pain.

I would be incredibly indebted for anyone's help in resolving this issue so that i am able to align points and numbers so that they appear appropriately when aligned to a new section plane view from within autocad. See the section view image attached to gain an understanding of what i mean about the misalignment.

Receive my gratitude in advance for any help you may be able to offer.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

3wood — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:03:43 GMT

I think there is something special / wrong in the block definition.

Can you post an example dwg and we can test on the blocks?

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:13:23 GMT

thanks for coming back 3wood.

I have attached a part of the survey dwg so that you can have a go at it.

looking forward to your results.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

3wood — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:56:11 GMT

Not sure how you did the align.

What I did is copy the whole drawing (Ctrl+C), change UCS to the vertical plan, then paste the whole drawing. It looks fine to me.

See image below:

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

parkr4st — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 12:09:24 GMT

I also looked at the data, What does it represent? Looks like points on streets. Do the points have any other data/attributes etc available to them.

What software package are you using?

It behaved as I would have anticipated for survey points.

dave

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 20:34:46 GMT

Dear 3wood

Copying and pasting to a new ucs will make them appear on a vertical plane
but it will not provide a different sectional view through the points with
the points being legible. If you change the view to align to that vertical
plane you again have the same sectional view of the building appearing in
plan. If you go to top view, which is what we need, you still can't see
those points now pasted in the vertical plane. I need those points aligned
to a section line through the building so that I can immediately see what
that section looks like. These are survey points from a historic building
and that is why I need sections.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 20:43:46 GMT

Dave thank you for having a look.

These are points from a historic building. I have very simple piece of
software importing the ascii format survey data from an excel file. It was
custom made by a friend.

This is the long section. I want those points aligned to the section plane
like they appear in plan like this:

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Patchy — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 20:59:30 GMT

I don't think plain autocad can do it, maybe civil3d group can help you build those points to a solid model.

My old LDD can only do this:

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

parkr4st — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:02:12 GMT

This is a surface from the points with Map3d. Not sure if you can see it. Where is the building? We can look on Google earth?

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

3wood — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 06:08:37 GMT

I still don't quite understand what is final result should be.

I guess you need copy blocks to FRONT plane, then rotate these blocks 90 degree on SIDE UCS individually based on their insertion point. You can view the data from TOP view correctly then.

I have attached fixed drawing and can you check if it is what you need now?

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

steven-g — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 08:51:31 GMT

Does the other software create the blocks? or use a block that is already defined in the drawing, In the attached drawing is a block that will show the values from plan view or front view, it could be adapted to show other viewing angles as needed, but being a dynamic block it will increase your drawing size!

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 09:29:05 GMT

The software is rather old and I am not aware that it can be manipulated.
But is there a way to batch convert these blocks into dynamic blocks? The
amount of time saved clearly makes the extra size worthwhile in my mind.

I hope we can sort this out.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

steven-g — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 09:59:30 GMT

If that block I used does the trick then you can, use the design center and choose the redefine option to place it into any other drawings. You will then need to use the attsync command followed by selecting alll the blocks and changing the visibility state of all the blocks from the properties palette (or quick properties).

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 19:36:05 GMT

Dear Steven-g,

What you have shown in the attached drawing is indeed very hopeful although
I am not sure what the steps are exactly to doing what you did.

Can you become clearer as to what exactly you did, what commands you used
and what the individual steps are please?

Also, can the visibility parameter be adjusted to account for random section
planes at angles other than 90 degrees multiples to the original view?

Thank you very much for your help.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

steven-g — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 08:39:17 GMT

It is a bit of a complicated process to explain, but it doesn't take long, however there is another method that might be a bit easier.

Select one of the blocks and use copybase (Ctrl+Shift+C) picking the point as the base. Then change your ucs to match how you want the blocks to be viewed, and paste the block (Ctrl+v) anywhere in the drawing, and explode the copy of the block. Now you recreate the block. Change the ucs back to world, start the block command and choose the exploded point and attribute, using the point as the base point, and using the same block name "LayoutPoint", you will need to confirm that you want to redefine the block. Now run Attsync and select one of the blocks. All your blocks should now change.

This macro will do all that for you, except for the Attsnc at the end, just watch the command line because it will prompt you many times for some input, including allowing you to pick the new ucs using 3 clicks (origin, x and y), you could alter that in the macro to use a named view etc. This would probably be much neater with LISP or VBA, but that is beyond my skill level?

^C^C^C_copybase;\\;_ucs;\\\_pasteclip;\explode;last;ucs;world;-block;LayoutPoint;yes;\\

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 18:45:15 GMT

I just wanted to say many thanks to steven-g for this solution to this problem i have had for ages. God bless you mate.

Re: Alignment of Survey Points and their text to new section planes views

steven-g — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 19:04:26 GMT

Thank you for the kind words, I am really happy I could help.