I was forced to switch from AutoCad 2007 Land Development Desktop to AutoCad Civil 3D 2012.?ÿ The problem I have is that C3D 2012 does not recognize the LDD 2007 points database.?ÿ How does one load a drawing from its LDD project with C3D and have the points register correctly.?ÿ
LDD has an drawing orientation setup where an AutoCad world coordinate is given a project Northing & Easting.?ÿ For instance, (0,0) is stored as a local coordinate of N:5K,E:5K.?ÿ LDD 2007 used COGO points which were converted Softdesk point blocks with attributes.?ÿ I??m not sure what C3D uses for points and database.?ÿ I find it difficult to believe that Autodesk did not allow for a backwards compatibility with older projects.
I did manage to load a 2007 drawing and do a conversion of AutoCad points in the drawing and they showed up in a listing of points.?ÿ It assumed the local N&E were World coordinates and removed ?ÿthe points from their original drawing location to a location 5,000 feet away.
How do I load these old drawings with their coordinates intact?
There is a conversion routine, but I export the points to a csv file, then import them into C3D. That is the best solution, otherwise it doesn't work all that well.
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I make a new "clean" drawing in C3D with the correct templates/settings, then copy/paste what I want from the older drawing, but not points, those I turn off.
I have no idea about your base shifting.?ÿ
You can convert an LDD drawing with points to a C3d drawing with points easily.?ÿ There is function in C3d for that, as you have already discovered.?ÿ There is no reverse function (C3d to LDD) for that.?ÿ
One way to break into the LDD point database file is to open it with MS Access. Export to .csv, and import that to C3d.?ÿ Hmmmm. on second thought, import your LDD drawing to C3d. Much easier.?ÿ
There are other ways in C3d. They have provided some tools. When in doubt, google it.?ÿ
Don't despair. In 5 years you will wonder why you took so long to make the switch.?ÿ
Unfortunately LDD's method of setting a project orientation that is different from x=E,y=N,N up the page was not very well thought out, it requires the shift and rotation values to interface correctly with the real world and that info is in the LDD project not the dwg. The best way is to use the import landdesktop tool (on the insert tab of the ribbon) and get the points into their correct location based on your old LDD project. Then align all of your drawing elements to the points in their correct location. Once you ave that done then you can orient you drawing on the screen properly by using the UCS and Plan commands, then if you don't like the crosshairs being rotated you can set them up right by using the snapang command.
RRain
