Drawing became severely "fragmented" for no apparent reason

Hi, I've never posted before but last night something fearful happened and I hope someone can help me out. I was drafting away in LT 2012 when suddenly the model space drawing just got totally messed up. It looks like most of the data disappeared and what remains looks nothing like what it should. The image on the left is what it's supposed to look like, the one on the right is what it turned into. I don't know what command I was trying to do when it happened. I was able to go back to a previously saved file but still... I miss R14 and 2002! Never had any problems with those, but they won't work on my new computer.

Could it just be that the view got rotated/twisted?

Do you still have the "messed up" drawing to post?

Just looking at it, I have two possibilities to offer. One...you have a video issue. Your video card couldn't display the information correctly for some reason, and a reboot might fix it if that's the case. The second is that even though you are working in LT, it appears that you may have some entities that are off in the z axis, and somehow you got off on a side or top view. There's no way to know without the actual drawing. If it's over the forum limit for filesize, send me a pm and I'll send you my realworld email address and take a look at it for you.

Thanks for the tips. I just fixed it. I thought that it had to do with some of the lines having a nonzero value for the Z axis. The comments about rotation and views led me to look at 3D views under the Views tab. I changed the view to Top and the drawing reappeared correctly. I didn't even know this was available in LT. I still want to figure out what command alias I accidentally typed to make this happen in the first place, but now I will know what to do if it reoccurs. Thanks again for the replies!

If available in LT(as I do not know) try holding down the

shift key + middle mouse button

and move your mouse.

You can always select top or undo but I do that accidently every once in a while.

Jeff H, I tried your suggestion and it brings up Osnap settings (good to know). I thought I was unable to UNDO out of the problem, but I see now that I can, so I must've panicked and just closed the drawing without even trying it!

I have run across this many times over the years, and still can't figure out how the z-axis coordinate gets screwed up during 2d drafting. If you were using regular AutoCAD there are a number of lisp routines that will fix this for you. In LT, I'm not sure what is available.

Did not know that but looks like Lt has no 3d support or maybe it does but disabled and will slip through the cracks accidently.

http://imaginit.com/software-solutions/building-architecture/autocad-lt/2012_autocad_vs_autocadlt_comparison_matrix_en?feed=84efc281-9b64-4a50-b668-8a9f97443cf3

I think you can still type in a Z coordinate which gives you access to 3D, although it's as minimal as you can possibly get. Definitely no 3D navigation or 3D tools whatsoever.

You will need to create a button with this Macro to set Z=0:

^C^C_UCS;;_move _all;;0,0,1e99;;_move _all;;0,0,-1e99;;_chprop;_all;;_thickness;0;;^M;

You will need to create a button with this Macro to set Z=0:

 

^C^C_UCS;;_move _all;;0,0,1e99;;_move _all;;0,0,-1e99;;_chprop;_all;;_thickness;0;;^M;

If he has blocks that are screwed up in Z axis, this will only move the block's insertion point to zero z, right? He'll have to edit the blocks themselves to fix any that are messed up methinks.

If he has blocks that are screwed up in Z axis' date=' this will only move the block's insertion point to zero z, right? He'll have to edit the blocks themselves to fix any that are messed up methinks.[/quote']

 

That would be my guess, but I haven't ran into that problem. Yet.

 

I never get Z values in 2D drawings I start from the beginning, it is always from working in other drawings and bringing in from other drawings. I suspect a lot that I have where I work now, came from Civil3D or other verticals, but certainly not all of them.

your going to have to flatten the crap out of that monstrosity.

I've dealt with this on several occasions, even after you flatten and set any z to 0 your likely to have to go into the file and redraw some stuff.