Converting 3D polylines to 2D polylines

[Anonymous]

I have seen a few posts regarding converting 3D plines to 2D where it was suggested to explode the lines. I found a better solution in AutoCAD Map. It is under Map/Tools/Drawing Cleanup. On the second page of this wizard you will see a heading called 'Cleanup Actions'. Choose 'simplify objects', hit NEXT, and near the bottom of the page is an option to convert 3D polylines into polylines.

They will also hold any linetypes that were assigned to them while they were 3D. This is useful for plotting since 3D polylines won't display the linetypes so you can do this conversion before printing.

[Anonymous]

Hi Kate_eug,

Good one,

Keep sharing.

Cheers,
Kashyap

[Anonymous]

From What I know, simplify doesn't work on 3-d, Weed is needed. Simplify takes out vertices and is opposite of smoothing.

Jim

[Anonymous]

If you go through the drawing cleanup wizard using the simplify options, you will see that it does work for 3D polylines and that it does not take out the vertices.

The "weed" command? I do not use 'weed'. Perhaps you are using 'weed' too often which would explain the confusion.

[Anonymous]

In case it isn't obvious I was joking with you Jed 🙂

It is recommended by AutoCAD that you do Simplify as a seperate operation.

[Anonymous]

I was so slow I didn't catch on till reading your reply. I have never used the weed, in either way. So what does the Weed Command do? I read the help and thought it was only for 3D. When I tried using it, I got 'confused' with the angle parameters. However, I use the simplify quite a bit to take out the enormous amount of vertices put into plines which were originally created as splined lines. I found that the simplify to one tenth foot cut down file size by 80 percent.

May have wandered slightly from post. So have yet to use it for the flattening of lines. Will try it next time instead of the "Flatten Command" which I have previously been using for many years.

Till later ,Jim

[Anonymous]

The flatten command is an easy way to take out the elevations of 3D polylines but it does not convert them to 2D polylines. The 3D polylines will not display a linetype pattern, it will appear continuous. So if you are using a map that has 3D polylines in it and you then want to print or display different linetypes, "simplify" is the command to use. If you just want to make all the Z values 0, then flatten is easier.

I haven't tried the weed command yet but will see what it is.

Thanks.