Why Are Overlapping Objects So Common?

[Bill Tillman]

I prepare drawings for aluminum extrusion systems and I am often "fur-shmangled" as to the amount of overlapping, duplicate lines, arcs, etc... the drawings I use for templates contain. It's not just the in-house drawings I'm referring to. Many times I download die drawings from the manufacturers of the various systems we use from their website and these drawings too contain many duplicate lines, etc... A drawing I'm working with this morning of a die has as many as 5 duplicate lines on top of other lines in some locations. One would think that a big company like these suppliers would work to avoid this situation. I seem to get stuck with them when I'm creating 3D drawings of the systems when I need to PEDIT or JOIN a group of objects into a single polyline in order to extrude it this becomes a real issue.

 

I have thought about a method, perhaps using LISP to hunt down and destroy these duplicate objects. This morning I discovered the "OVERKILL" command in the Express Tools. I ran it on a group of objects and sure enough it worked finding one duplicate object out of the 115 objects which made up the extrusion's shape. I'll be testing this method more as it does seem to be what I'm looking for because this condition of duplicates is so pervasive. I'm wondering if all the selection choices in the OVERKILL menu will allow it to find lines which are not duplicates but just overlap which is the main source of these problems.

 

Oh yeah, while I'm complaining about sloppy drafting, why is it that fillets, even without any radius are often the problem when I'm trying to join all the lines and arcs together. Is the world just this sloppy or is this another one of those pesky problems like when a line at 0.00° angle shows up in the properties as being something in scientific notation instead of number for the angle measurement. Is there some method for finding out why an object cannot be a closed polyline beside breaking it up and then checking each object individually.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by Bill Tillman

[CyberAngel]

Overkill is da bomb. I'd guess what happens in these industry details is, they insert blocks or copies of various objects, and sometimes the edges overlap. When the detail gets published, the blocks are exploded--or maybe the detail is translated to/from DXF or some other format.

 

My guess on fillets is that the end point of an arc is calculated using the start point and the curve, which could be slightly different from the end point of the line it's supposed to meet. It would be nice if the fillet arc was defined by both end points and then filled in, because we wouldn't have that problem.

[ReMark]

You only discovered the Overkill command this morning?  I guess you haven't read some of my many replies mentioning the command.  LOL

 

It has been my experience that overlapping and duplicate lines are commonly found in drawings created by newbies to AutoCAD, by companies (many of which are located outside the U.S.) who are in the business of providing CAD conversions and 2D drawings created by using the Flatten command on a 3D object or objects.

[Bill Tillman]

No doubt about it. I should have discovered OVERKILL long ago. This has been an ongoing issue. For example, besides AutoCAD locking up on me causing me to have to use Task Manager to kill it and losing work done, this shape finally is cleaned up. There were nine (9) duplicate items in it. And that's just the first shape I've worked with in this system. At least a dozen more to go to get this mess straightened out. That's the good thing about AutoCAD, there's always more than one way to accomplish a given task.

 

Thanks all.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Bill Tillman

[Cad64]

7 hours ago, ReMark said:

It has been my experience that overlapping and duplicate lines are commonly found in drawings created by newbies to AutoCAD, by companies (many of which are located outside the U.S.) who are in the business of providing CAD conversions and 2D drawings created by using the Flatten command on a 3D object or objects.

 

Same here. I have a client who uses a company overseas to do general drafting. Then their CAD files get sent to me so I can create the construction documents, but before I can begin, I always have to spend time cleaning up their messes. Many times the problems are from 3D objects that have been flattened, but other times it's just incredibly sloppy drafting. It's irritating for sure, but I do get paid for it, so it's all good.