Elevated Objects (z - co-ords)

need some assistance with flattening a WHOLE drawing.

i have tried the flatten command and another i found on this forum for flatten all objects but now the only soultion i can see and that works is selecting each object and changing the Z co-ords to '0' by hand!!!!

can you help?

Brooof

One way would be to select everything, then go to the dropdown menu and select "3d Solids" and then type 0 in.. That should put all solids at the same 0 elevation. You shouldn't have to do it manually for each solid. Of coarse, this assumes that the 3d solids you are depicting can be properly represented in 2d. That isn't always the case..

For example, a simple 3d box can be represented in 2d with a rectangle (which would show the box before it was extruded). But 3d solids are not always so geometrically simple.

Another way would be to explode all the extruded solids and delete all the faces above 0 elevation (because exploding a 3d solid always results in multiple faces on each facet of the solid). You would be left with the 3d face of each solid at 0 elevation, which you could, technically, explode again to create lines that could be made back into closed polylines using the PEDIT command. OR you could just leave the bottom face just depending on what you're wanting to show.

If you are tring to show a section view, doing it this way might not accurately depict the true cross-section just depending on where the section lines are located in the drawing. If you are showing the section lines halfway up the solid, simply showing the very end of each solid may not accurately depict the cross-section you're trying to show. Again, it all depends on the geometry of the solids.

Not too involved, but a little tricky to someone that might not be too comfortable yet with the software.

-ChriS

thanks for the response but my objects were drawn in 2D and are not in 3D or solid objects..

its just a 2D site plan gone wrong!!!!..and the flatten tools are making things worse!!!

Always try out these things on a copy of your drawing.

Are you sure that you do not have any blocks that have been created by mistake with a z value other than zero? You should explode all such blocks.

Then try the old method of confusing AutoCAD. Move everything @0,0,1e99. Then move everything @0,0,-1e99. Because the z values are made so large in the first move, AutoCAD gets confused with the slight differences and makes all z values to be 1e99. The second move then moves everything back to zero. This procedure is simple, and works a lot of the time.

thought this was Working but i now cant find my objects?

the problem i have is that the z co-ords are all different and i can only view/select them when rotate to the front view!!!

this is getting frustrating now...

thank you all for your assistance though..

My advice was assumimg that you were in a plan view. When asked to select objects to move, you do not have to see them, you just enter 'all' at the prompt, and as long as the layers are not locked, fozen or turned off, everything is selected.

thanks eldon, woudl this work with items on different z Co-ords though? can you select 'all' and specify '0' as the final Z co-ord?

Now don't go mixing up the advice from several sources.

I was talking about my advice in post #4.

eldon's tip in post #4 always works well.

If you have a few drawings to do or if you just want to make sure that the drawing your working on is 'flat' then copy and paste the following string onto a custom toolbar button-

^C^C_select;all;;_move;p;;0,0,0;0,0,1e99;_move;_p; ;0,0,0;0,0,-1e99;^M;

This does the move and move back with one click of the button.

It should work with all versions of Autocad and LT.

great tip nukecad...