Thursday, March 17, 2011

What The World Needs is an Export To AutoCAD That Works

Ever tried to use Export To AutoCAD to create a drawing for a client or partner that doesn't have Civil 3D? Has this been as much of a nightmare for you as it has been for me?  For the simplest Civil 3D drawings, yes....it works.  But throw in an XREF or some locked COGO points and the export will often fail.  Here are some issues that I've run into using Export To AutoCAD:

  • Certain XREFs simply won't bind
  • Locked COGO points can't be exploded so the conversion fails
  • Contour labels become MTEXT with a black hatch behind them instead of a mask.
  • The export simply fails
  • The resulting file is missing stuff
I've seen cases where converting a few Civil 3D drawings has taken hours because the user had to manually open each drawing, explode everything, bind everything, and so on.
So...what do you do?  Have you been able to come up with a workflow that is reliable?  What kinds of problems do you consistently run into?
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4 comments:

  1. I would say "you are not alone".

    This is a process that causes an incredible amount of stress. Our working solution is to use a Tool Pallate and Place blocks ontop of cogo points and disable the point display style. This can be achieved by a lisp routine but the author is not sharing.

    But this inability to export AEC objects is frustrating. I have a Long list of things that don't export to various versions. Promoted surface reference is the only thing i have found that exports well, but even that leaves a black mask behind.

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  3. This post reminds me that I wish there was a "burst" command for mleaders to make them into qleaders.

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  4. This is my favorite new feature not yet released by Autodesk.

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