2012 Civil 3D stuff doesn't show up in older versions

We recently made the transition to 2012 civil 3d from the 2010 version. The project is an 11 mile gas pipeline. Our client requires a plan and profile of this pipeline, no problem, I created an alignment for the pipeline, station labels every 500', station labels at PIs, the profile with profile labels at the PIs and blaw blaw blaw... the issue is that when I sent the CAD file to the client (who is not running 2012), the labels, profile, alignment to do not show up when they open the drawing. Keep in mind that nothing is exploded, the alignment and profile are dynamic with each other. I attempted to save my 2012 drawing to a 2010 version, but it just gives me the fatal error and crashes. And from what I've been told is that even if I could export it to an older version, all my dynamic data still wouldn't come through. Sadly I had to explode everything and convert my cogo points to blocks so that the client could have everything in the CAD file, and luck for us they don't require a dynamic working drawing. So does anybody have any information on this topic, is there an update I need to install? I'd hate to have to explode this stuff all the time since I can easily edit my alignment on the pipeline and have everything update automatically when my drawing in dynamic. Thanks

You should probably just use "Export to AutoCAD" or Etransmit with "Explode AEC objects" though no matter, I believe there is no way to retain your Civil stuff. You should probably just go back to a few seats of 2010 if this is a big client and work like that.

DISCLAIMER: I am completely stupid when it comes to Civil3D.

Thanks for the advise! Sometimes you have to take a step back to moved ahead.

When I tried to save it to 2010 I "exported to autocad" "2010 format" then it thinks about it a couple minutes and decides to crash. Its about gotta be the civil stuff trying to export to 2010 format and crashing, or maybe the size of the drawing, possibly both? Its 9.1 MB large.

If I can't get issue corrected I will take your advise and use 2010 for this type of work. Thanks again.

Be patient, there are many on this forum that are quite good with Civil3d. I am just not one of them.

Do you have XREFs in your drawing? I've noticed that "Export to Autocad" seems to like to crash in C3D 2010 if your drawing has XREFs that contain C3D entities. Haven't used 2012 enough yet to say if I see similar issues there.

If you want to recreate the drawing in 2010, you might try starting by doing an "Export LandXML" on your Alignments/Profiles in 2012, and import the LandXML into a new drawing in C3D 2010. There are some caveats to this, however, and it works better in some cases than in others. Give it a try and see what happens.

I don't know anything about C3D but it may have to do with how you created the objects. If you used some new feature, it may not "save down". I've noticed that 2010 AutoCAD's mleaders won't save down properly to 2007. The leader itself comes through, but the text is missing. Found this out the hard way. Sent a completed set of curtain wall details to a customer, he sends back that they look great, but why did I put all those leaders in and no text? Did I intend to come back later and add the text but forgot? First thing I did was pull the drawing up, and all the text was there. 2010 could see it. Opened the same file on my 2007 machine, it was gone. Now I have to remember that for anybody I have to save down for, not to use mleaders.

Could it be something like that? Is there a way in C3D to create the objects that are causing your problems in the "old way"?

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to set some time aside and play around with it, a bit of trail and error never hurt.

We've been using Civil 3D since version 2007 and have clients who are using various versions up to 2012. It always has been a problem dealing with the different versions of Civil 3D and the only solution we came up with was to ask the client before starting the project in which version of Civil 3D did he want us to work, as it isn't possible to convert between different versions. Autodesk do allow you, for this very reason and also recommend, to have the various versions of Civil 3D installed on your computer (note: they only allow the various versions to be installed on the same computer, not on different ones).

Saving C3D 2012 to 2010 will save the AutoCAD entities to 2010 but not the C3D entities. If you export to AutoCAD you lose all of your C3D functionality and if you open the exported AutoCAD file again in C3D the functionality does not come back

We have the same problem.

We have Clients Download the latest version of Design Review if they want to see the actual dwg.

Like Tyke says there is no way to export everything you just get parts of the dwg.

So what the client ends up with is a broken dwg that they have to figure out

how to put back together and wonder if its all correct. (XML etc)