Where did all my feature lines go?

[Anonymous]

Did an purge and audit and lost all my feature lines!! My finished surface is totally gone! Why and how to prevent it from happening again.

ANdy

[Jay_B]

What version and service pack?

We had this issue here and it can be caused by using a Template which was derived from the Acad.dwt in the 2014 & 2015 releases.

We rebuilt our dwt from scratch using the C3d Imperial NCS and the problem went away.

Another test to see if this might be the issue your having is create a drawing using that same dwt create a couple feature lines and use the "Move to Site" command and the original Site will disappear if your having the same troubles we had here.

We are on 2014 SP 2 here.

[Anonymous]

First thanks for your quick response. Second, I apologize for not providing the basic info. I was freaking out that all my feature lines were gone! Fortunately I had a found a back up in the temp folder. I copied and pasted them the feature lines back in and ran audit command and watched them disappear and the command line stays nothing was erased! Unbelievible!

Anyways, I’m running C3D 2014 service pack 2. The drawing was started before I arrived here, but I’m creating/create new styles utilizing the Civil 3D Imperial NCS extended template and then import style into this base drawing.

Andy

[Jay_B]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I copied and pasted them the feature lines back in and ran audit command and watched them disappear and the command line stays nothing was erased! Unbelievible!

I’m creating/create new styles utilizing the Civil 3D Imperial NCS extended template and then import style into this base drawing.

Andy

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If the drawing was started with the Acad.dwt ( I realize your unsure) and you are just importing styles into this dwg which has the issue it will likely remain unstable.

I'd recommend trying a test of moving a feature line in this drawing from one site to another.

If, the original site does disappear, you've basically confirmed the dwt was likely based on the Acad.dwt and then close without saving the file.

In older dwg's that were created using our Acad.dwt based company dwt I'll avoid using Move to Site.

If needed, we are able to insert the problem dwg into the new NCS dwt based dwt to fix the issue.

[Anonymous]

Will I be ok continuing developing my template of Civil 3D Imperial extended.dwt?

[Jay_B · Accepted solution]

Yes, if you're creating a new template using the OOTB C3D Imperial NCS.dwt as the starting point, you should be just fine.

I'm just recommending you test the existing drawings to help narrow down the cause of Feature Lines being erased.

One of the symptoms of a corrupted dwg/dwt, which was created from an Acad.dwt as the starting point, is having Feature Lines disappear by simply running an AUDIT.

[Jeff_M]

Disregard this reply...was viewing from my phone and I guess my finger hit post instead of back. Then I couldn't delete it.

[annw2]

When moving from LDT or generic AutoCAD files, you need to create a new file using a real Civil3d template, then insert the old 'generic' file into the new one to get things to work correctly.

[jmayo-EE]

"One of the symptoms of a corrupted dwg/dwt, which was created from an Acad.dwt as the starting point, is having Feature Lines disappear by simply running an AUDIT. " Just to add a bit to this, I believe the issue with acad.dwt is limited to releases 13 or higher. I have created a number of templates in 13, 14 and 15 with and R12 acad.dwt without issue. I use feature lines a lot. So if you find the NCS template full of bloat and in-operability you do have options.

[vandenoosterkamp]

Jay,

do you know if that can also be the reason for subassemblies disappearing?

We got a design and on audit the right side of ALL assemblies vanished.

I'm sorry for hyacking this topic...

[vaughan.giles7AGEV]

So, I just had the lovely experience of having my featurelines vanish as well.

Here's my latest example:

C3D 2018 - copy to clipboard failed, so purged and audited my drawing. It decided to delete my featurelines from the model completely. furthermore, it wouldn't let me undo any actions and so I closed it WITHOUT saving.

Upon re-opening my drawing, it RETAINED those changes - causing me to lose my model completely.

On a previous occasion in C3D 2020 I had a similar error that was caused by the Corridor model in my drawing, which caused the featurelines to be deleted in a similar fashion.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to hear your having this issue with 2018 & even 2020.  Jay-B is correct. It's the corrupt template (2015) that causes the audit command to delete the feature lines, not the version on C3D you are using. WBLOCK the dwg and insert into new dwg.

Andy

[vaughan.giles7AGEV]

I have been using our company standard C3D templates to create these files from scratch, but I haven't tried doing a WBLOCK, so will see how I go with that, thanks Andy.