Topic: vanishing xref contours

[cadtag]

I'm totally bemused with what's happening. I'm trying to help out a friend, and am stumped. Civil3d 2013, on a fairly decent Dell tower, 12Gb RAM,  3.3 xeon processor, lots of free diskspace.

Scenario: for a large linear job, existing grade was created in a separate office (by a non-c3d guru) and the surface drawing was shipped up to the remote office. There's nothing in the drawing except the surface (created from GIS contours) and the contour labels. Layers for major and minor and labels are all on, not frozen, visible, and none are set to non-plot. (C-TOPO-MAJR, C-TOPO-MINR, C-TINN, C-TOPO-TEXT)

This file is XREFed into modelspace in a sheet file that has a half-dozen tabs, two to three vports per tab. In some of the viewports, not all by any means, either none of the contour lines show up, or only some of them do. There are no per-viewport over-rides, and all layers are on, thawed, and plottable. In the area where the contour lines fail to show up, the contour labels do.

Ideas? things to check?

I should note, the person who is doing the final production of the drawings is an engineering intern, so complexity needs to be minimal -- which is why I'm not trying to dataref in the surface to the sheets.  No one in that shop has any c3d training or experience, and are essentially working w/o a net. 

[Jeff_M]

Can you post the 2 dwg files?

[BuckoAk]

Do all of the contours & labels show up in Model? Or is this specific to Paper Space Only?

You said you checked for frozen & off layers, but did you check for Vport Freeze & Off for these layers.

Any Wipeouts in the Drawing?

[BlackBox]

You said you checked for frozen & off layers, but did you check for Vport Freeze & Off for these layers.

I think that was covered with this statement:

This file is XREFed into modelspace in a sheet file that has a half-dozen tabs, two to three vports per tab. In some of the viewports, not all by any means, either none of the contour lines show up, or only some of them do. There are no per-viewport over-rides, and all layers are on, thawed, and plottable. In the area where the contour lines fail to show up, the contour labels do.

@Cadtag -

Just a guess... Is there anything Annotative that would cause the model (or object style(s) ) to not show correctly (i.e., check MSLTSCALE, PSLTSCLAE, LTSCALE, etc.)?

[cadtag]

drawings are confidential..   ...  msltscale, psltscale,ltscale, all 1.

all contours show properly in model space, no wipeouts in use.

Rather hilly terrain, but one viewport shows major and minor contours/labels from 483 to 465,   and from 449 to the limits of the vport.  Only the labels show up for 464 thru 450.

[BlackBox]

drawings are confidential..   ... 

... Side work _Helping out a friend_ usually is.   

msltscale, psltscale,ltscale, all 1.

  *Kicks dirt*

[Jeff_M]

Is LevelOfDetail on? If so, turn it off. (Ribbon, View Tab, drop down the Views panel)

Short of seeing the drawings, that's all I can think of.

[BuckoAk]

You said you checked for frozen & off layers, but did you check for Vport Freeze & Off for these layers.

I think that was covered with this statement:

This file is XREFed into modelspace in a sheet file that has a half-dozen tabs, two to three vports per tab. In some of the viewports, not all by any means, either none of the contour lines show up, or only some of them do. There are no per-viewport over-rides, and all layers are on, thawed, and plottable. In the area where the contour lines fail to show up, the contour labels do.

RenderMan,
The VP Freeze is overlook quite a bit, and it doesn't show up thru the layer manager if your depending on the "Viewport override background color" to color the line for you.  If the Engineering Intern wasn't reading the command prompt when he/she was freezing an entity they could have done a VP Freeze rather easily.  Or if a new layer was created and the New VP Freeze was toggled in the layer manager this would produce the same results.  Most cad users don't know that the Layer Freeze has 4 functions (Model Space Freeze, VP Freeze, Block Freeze & Entity Freeze ).

This issue pops up every so often in the office I work at, so this is why I asked the question.
I don't think the original statement covered enough in detail.

cadtag,
Double click in one of the viewports that's having issues and re-check the VP Freeze & New VP Freeze in the layer manager.
If all contours are showing up in model, the problem is most likely with your viewport in some way.

As for the contour labels, double check the contour label styles for each and make sure that the line is crossing all the contours if your using "contour - multiple"

[BlackBox]

I agree that more information would be of help, however... 'No viewport overrides', is quite specific. The word 'no' leaves little room for interpretation, my friend.

Either cadtag's statement is accurate or it is not... That is for him to clarify. I'm not here to argue the validity of someone else's statements, nor the status of drawings that I am unable to open.

[mjfarrell]

has 3d clipping been accidentally enabled?

The level of complexity would be reduced IF you allowed them to use a Data Reference for the surface in question
as most likely the 'problem' yu are now attempting to resolve would not exist.
What could be simpler than NO problem to solve?

[cadtag]

3d clipping is a possibility - except would that not hide the contour labels as well?  I had thought the labels were at the same elevation as the contour line?

Since some, not all, of the C-TOPO-MAJR, and some, not all, of the C-TOPO-MINR contours do show up in the viewport, VPFREEZE is ruled out.

Dref -- I suspect that might resolve it permanently, but would be nice to know that XREF and Civil3D do in fact work properly and as designed.  The original interns workaround had been to explode the surface after labeling, and xref in the contour lines as dumb polylines on top of the surface.  I did explain how ctb files work, printed him an index sheet of their company colors/weights, and he now understands that color 164 will plot blue, while blue plots black, even though they both look blue on screen. Which skill level may help explain my reluctance to try and teach data references...

Intern A has finals next wed, and is leaving town right after that, possibly returning some time down the road.  Intern B may start sometime after that....  don't know when.  My expectation of their c3d expertise is either minimal exposure, or none at all.  What they are supposed to be doing, is basic linework and annotation on top of the base created in the remote office and have plottable drawings.

I'm starting to think it may be a problem with that viewport being corrupted... Next trial will be asking Intern A to create another viewport with the same properties/scale/viewcenter as the bad one and see if the hole-in-the-world repeats itself.

[mjfarrell]

could it be a linetype scaling issue?

is the viewport set to anything other than 2D wireframe and UCS World set to Top (plan) view?
The surface style is typically set to NOT display contours or their labels in MODEL views.

Data shortcuts are not that tough to explain or work with...


true they could be better if Civil 3D actually support project management better

[BlackBox]

No just project management overall; even per-document Working Folder would be helpful. There's a workaround, but it requires XML being updated programmatically, and an undocumented command being invoked to make C3D 'see' the XML changes.

/vent

[cadtag]

agree completely with the lack of a 'project' concept in c3d that actually works.  one of the places that Softdesk had working vastly better.  External project files are so much easier to manage/share IMHO.

Since some of the major and minor contours show up in the viewport, the vport has to be ucs world, 2d wireframe, plan.  right?

Michael, if you've got a one-page description/work flow for drefs that an intern can follow, it would help convert them.  I don't, but you've got much more experience with c3d, and teaching c3d