Replace Z Value - AutoCAD LT 2014

I have a drawing from a land surveyor who shot points for some anchor bolts (1000+ points) on a bridge that's approximately 2,500 LF and has a gradual arch. The drawing was done in some Civil program and is completely 3-D. I need to create 2-D railing fabrication drawings based on these existing locations. When I draw the railing in AutoCAD LT 2014, each time I reference an anchor bolt it places the new object at the Z-elevation of the anchor bolt. Thus resulting in a railing drawing that are non-coplaner (this causes problems when using fillet, trim, extend, etc).

I need to be either A) flatten the entire drawing (reset all Z-elevations to zero) or use a function similar to "OSNAPZ" or "Replace Z Value" selection under Drafting tab of options. BUT... neither of these choices are available for AutoCAD LT users. I could care less about the 3-D, I just want to draw a flat drawing!

Thank you in advance!

View this thread and refer to Post #5:

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?43336-How-to-make-Z-0&

HTH

There are plenty of ways to flatten them as above. If those don't work for you then do a search on this forum and there are other methods described.

I'd be careful of flattening the points however. If you are drawing a railing between the coordinates (x,y,z) 0,0,0 and 10,10,20, then the rail will have a true length of 22.36m. However if you flatten the points so that their coordinates are now 0,0,0 and 10,10,0 and draw a line between them (representing the rail) then it will only have a length of 10m. If the rail resides under the deck and is planar then it isn't a problem although if it is a hand rail etc that follows the curvature of the bridge then you would have a problem if you were relying on the AutoCad lengths (and not hand calcs or third party software calcs).

Obviously my example was exaggerated a fair bit although in a bridge the tolerances are tight and you don't want to fabricate each railing 50mm too short etc.

Since LT doesn't have the Express tool FLATTEN, nor many other 3D commands you will need to use a Macro in a button or you could draw using point filters.

"To draw a PLINE at elevation 0: If you need a polyline at Z=0, I would suggest using the Point Filter .xy. When prompted for a point, type .xy then press Enter; apply the osnap that you want and pick the point. AutoCAD will respond with (need Z): type 0 and press Enter."

Flatten Selection

^C^C_UCS;;_select \_move _p;;0,0,1e99;;_move _p;;0,0,-1e99;;

Flatten All

^C^C_UCS;;_move _all;;0,0,1e99;;_move _all;;0,0,-1e99;;