If you want to manipulate a shapefile like plain vanilla, use MAPIMPORT command. This command will do two things:
- convert the shapefile geometry to Autocad entities.
- maintain the geospatial position, the location, of the line work in modelspace
If you know how, you can also harvest or pull out the data from the shapefile's database during MapImport. Harvesting the data will create AutoCad Object Data (OD) and will give you capabilities beyond vanilla Acad, e.g. perform queries.
FYI, Shapefiles cannot be treated as plain vanilla AutoCad entities. Sure you can edit them, for example, you can delete, add or reshape the geometry but only if you know how. It's easy for an AutoCad user to consider a shapefile to be just another drawing format when it's not. Shapefiles are not just geometry such as points, lines or polygons, they're points lines and polygons with data 'attached' to them.
To give an analogy, consider mobile phones. Back in the day, mobile phones were used for pure communication or talk & text phones. (Remember ya' had to press the '3' key 3X to get the letter F?) Now, you can get driving directions, perform banking transactions and order food. Old phones were dumb while new phones are smart.
You can consider a shapefile to be smart while plain vanilla line work to be dumb. Sure you can manipulate, if you know how, a shapefile and make it behave like dumb vanilla Acad but doing so takes the smart data right out of it. It's like buying a smart phone for purposes of talking/texting and ignoring all the built in smart features like apps and internet connections.
Shapefiles serve a completely different purpose and are typically used by a completely different user. Just like phone users, the typical shapefile user is one who not only wants data but knows how and is capable of using such data. The smart phone user would like to go beyond talking and texting while the shapefile user would like to go beyond drawing and get into data analysis.
And to be clear, MapImport doesn't harm or modify the original shapefile. The command merely makes a copy of the shapefile and converts the copy to AutoCad entities. The shapefile itself remains as-is.
Chicagolooper
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