Different Z cooridnates

The offending items could be in a block, or could have thickness. Have you flipped the drawing 90 degrees about the x axis to see what things are off Z=0?

Michael

I've had drawings where the flatten command hangs as well but 276Kb is pretty small for a hang

Sometimes it will work if you just select a portion of objects in the dwg rather than selecting All

I've had good success with the button macro thingie

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

S. Scalise - Can you paste the line above into a new menu button and see if it does the trick

HTH

Tim

There are offending blocks and offending "everything else". The only thing at "0" is the title block and some exploded and scaled details. Other items vary from 61'-3 1/4" to -124'-10 1/16" not counting dimensions & leaders. When viewing sw iso (for example) the leaders soar to the upper limits along with some of the text. Dimension points, arrows, etc. are on varing levels and of course these don't return a Z when checking their properties. The bottom line (IMHO): A totally screwed up drawing

I don't know what the express tool does, but try the routine that moves everything a light year and then moves it back. It is described in Tim's macro post above. You can run it from the command line if nothing is locked.

Gave it a try and the following is from the command line: _all;;0,0,1e99;;_move Unknown command "ALL;;0,0,1E99;;_MOVE". Press F1 for help. followed by: "ALL;;0,0,-1E99;;". Press F1 for help.

You've got to replace all the semicolons with punches on the Enter key:

-MOVE (Enter)

-all(Enter)

-MOVE (Enter)

-all(Enter)

Semicolons are the way "enter" is written into a script. This routine basically moves everything up, and then back down again, but beyond the accuracy capability of acad, so acad puts everything back to Z=0.

Hi all, it's really simple. to stop try this combination. I am not sure though. ctrl+break

as to the next question, go to this site and download the last LISP File zcord2zero some thing. run that it changes all z cords to 0.

Let us know if it works. Remember this stunt doesn't work for things inside blocks, or for things with thickness.

I've had a similar problem in the past which is when I realised , after a fair bit of research, there are about 3 FLATTEN lisps out there and 2 of them are absolutly useless on most drawings which contain things like blocks and arcs.

Bellow is pasted the version I use which has not let me down in the time I have been using it, try it and see what happens. When it asks to remove hidden lines, leave the default NO and just hit enter. Good Luck!!

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(defun c:flatten ( / ss ans ) (acet-error-init (list nil 1))

(princ "\nSelect objects to convert to 2d...") (if (not acet:flatn-hide) (setq acet:flatn-hide "No") );if

(if (and (setq ss (ssget "_:l" '((-4 . ""))));setq (setq ss (car (acet-ss-filter (list ss nil T)))) );and (progn (initget "Yes No") (setq ans (getkword (acet-str-format "\nRemove hidden lines? : " acet:flatn-hide ) );getkword );setq (if (not ans) (setq ans acet:flatn-hide) (setq acet:flatn-hide ans) );if (if (equal ans "No") (acet-flatn ss nil) (acet-flatn ss T) );if );progn then );if (acet-error-restore) );defun c:flatten

(acet-autoload2 '("FLATTENSUP.LSP" (acet-flatn ss hide))) (princ)

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I get this when I import from my surveying instrument. The survey instrument records all 3 dimensions when I take shots.

What I do is open the Properties window, select the entire drawing.

In the upper left part of the properties window is a selection drop down box. In here I choose the various objects that can have a Z property, like lines, points, etc. I choose each of these, and then set their Z properties to 0. After this I have no problems.

If you don't do this, lines won't meet when they appear to, distances will read longer than you expect, all sorts of wierd things.

Greg Chapp

That makes sense. Now, what happens if you do not change the Z's to 0 and start inserting building footprint blocks, adding dimensions & leader? That seems to be the story with the particular drawing giving me problems. As it turns out, the biggest culprits were the dims & leaders. Once all of them were erased/deleted I was able to move all other objects to zero. A truely messed up dwg!