Blocks appearing at 2 z vectors

[colin.stevensHLAG9]

Hope I can describe this issue  clearly.

I work as a rule in 2D plan(top) view. Everything looks fine. Recently we were asked to produce a drawing of one of our buildings in an Isometric view, showing all the floors "one above the other". No problem, except we noticed that various blocks appeared to be at 2 levels, ie we have a wash hand basin and one part of it would be at 0,0,0  the other part of it would be at 0,0,410, for instance.

So I opened the original drawing, put it into an isometric view and sure enough the same this was happening. When I base copied in the offending block from where our blocks are stored its fine. On comparing properties I found that the offending block was called 1$1$WHB, where as the good block was called WHB.

Can any one explain how our standard block has been renamed and corrupted please. 

A similar problem is occuring with some lines, again please any one help?

Incidentally if I open another floor different blocks are behaving "badly".

I am now going around the drawing replacing any block which has dollar signs in the name with new blocks. This cures the issue but is slow on LT.

[pendean · Accepted solution]

corrupted? there is no variant of AutoCAD, including LT, that only draws in 2D, and any user (even you) can easily and accidentally move something into a Z elevation without ever noticing.

As to your first question, you probably always had that block with those levels, or someone replaced your original block with this other one. Same for lines if someone object-snapped to something with a Z elevation.

FWIW most objects with $ in their names (including layers) are often a result of a RECOVER command fix to damaged files.

HTH

[colin.stevensHLAG9]

The first thing I did was open the offending block in "Block Editor". All was fine all lines were at zero on the Z axis.

Only some of the blocks had inherited this fault. I have gone around and replaced all the block that had "$" in the block name with a block that is good (?). There was a grouping of text that had a "Z" of -1410, but that was easily moved up to a "Z" of zero.

In  other drawings its a different set of blocks that have been "corrupted"

I should have said that my main machine is full 2016, but WFH I use 2021LT. 

Unfortunately my colleague and myself are not the only people to use our drawings, and we have come across drawings in the past that have obviously been saved by someone outside of our department. We are wondering if that has happened to these drawings in the past and we haven't noticed as we rarely, if ever, view them as isometric.

not looking forward to the task of putting them right, hoping some one can come up with a quick fix.

[pendean · Accepted solution]

In full AutoCAD, not LT, you can try FLATTEN command.

[steven-g · Accepted solution]

If you have access to full AutoCAD I would use that and look for a Lisp that will 'flatten' block geometry, I don't know if the express tools flatten will work for blocks.

But certainly, in LT you have no choice but to open each block definition and do this manually using the properties palette