Topic: LDT 2006 and Legacy Blocks

[Dinosaur]

here is a link to a discussion regarding a serious problem users of LDT 2006 are having when inserting legacy blocks.

[Dinosaur]

It now appears that xrefs and blocks that have been inserted in earlier releases are appearing out of scale and at incorrect insert points when the drawings are loaded with 2006.  This appears to be a very serious defect with the 2006 release and unfortunately one that Autodesk does not want to address unless users get very vocal with their complaints.
For now it is suggested that no 2005 and older version drawings be inserted or xref'd into a 2006 drawing that is set up for decimal format scales.  Architectural scales are apparently not affected.

[Onetrack]

Hi Dino,

This was a SERIOUS impediment when we transitioned here from LDD 2002 to 2006 last year, the scaling is way out to lunch.

I've found the best way is to load this as a small routine then make sure that you're set to unitless

;/--------
(if (not (zerop (getvar "insunits")))(setvar "insunits" 0))
;/--------

from the command line also set;

INSUNITS 0
INSUNITSDEFSOURCE 0
INSUNITSDEFTARGET 0

this will force any old block to come in as unitless.
I have found countless errors with older blocks either made on the autocad_zz or layer 0, blocks that had nested blocks within them etc.
Also, something really annoying, but I made a button for it, if you import a block thats of a different scale than the one you're working with, you always have to reset the drawing scale from the projects menu, just an ok is enough, otherwise the blocks come in at the wrong scale.

----
Other than this massive headache, the one I havn't yet solved is why the symbol manager is so broken its useless. I've got everyone converted over to the tool pallettes window now, but you cant insert a tool from the pallettes  to a point number automatically.

We're still on 2006 btw.

[Dinosaur]

Welcome to TheSwamp Onetrack.  Thanks for reviving this thread . . . I think it is still an issue with the blocks shipped with the 2007 and 2008  releases as well.  Land Desktop has turned into the stepchild of the infrastructure offerings with only half hearted attempts to keep it compatible with the core AutoCAD changes from year to year.  Each year it seems some previously working feature comes out broken and not patched fully through one or two service packs or hot fixes.  2007 was so  broken, you were likely unable to even save a drawing without crashing and was deemed unusable even by some resellers until the second service pack.  My best advice now for Land Desktop users short of taking the medicine and switch to Civil 3D cold turkey is to watch the newsgroups for at least a week after every program release and decide then if it is safe to install and take the same precautions for every service pack as they have been known to break working functions as well.

[Onetrack]

Thanks, I noticed your post was old but still quite relevant.. I'm just going through all the posts here to catch up to speed with the rest of you.
Has there been any fix for the scaling issues within the symbol manager? We don't even use it anymore since its less than worthless. And we have not upgraded yet to 2007, although my company has purchased it and 2008, civil design companion and land desktop. I have been reading all the horror stories of people not being able to upgrade fully to Civil design and I'm keeping an eye on that as well.

I've come up with several tricks and work arounds, have a working network deployment with a centralized data scheme, so I should be able to provide some input here and there. If I have a lisp routine that'll help someone, I'll definately send it here to the forums as well.

I'm not the only autocad guy here, but i am the only one who knows how to install, update and support it. Lucky me.

HA!

[Dinosaur]

There are a couple members around here that can answer your symbol manager question and advise about upgrading Land Desktop better than I.  I have 2006 installed for opening older projects, but I don't think I have done any actual work with it and haven't even bothered with 2007 or 2008.  I jumped into Civil 3D 2006 after it finally went somewhat stable that autumn and have used the 2007 version exclusively since SP2 passed muster.  Sinc has related his shared his adventures through that special ordeal that was 2006 and then going back for more with 2007.  I have yet to hear anything from him regarding 2008, but it looks like he has installed it and should be able to give you some good advice.

[jpostlewait]

Thanks, I noticed your post was old but still quite relevant.. I'm just going through all the posts here to catch up to speed with the rest of you.
Has there been any fix for the scaling issues within the symbol manager? We don't even use it anymore since its less than worthless. And we have not upgraded yet to 2007, although my company has purchased it and 2008, civil design companion and land desktop. I have been reading all the horror stories of people not being able to upgrade fully to Civil design and I'm keeping an eye on that as well.

I've come up with several tricks and work arounds, have a working network deployment with a centralized data scheme, so I should be able to provide some input here and there. If I have a lisp routine that'll help someone, I'll definately send it here to the forums as well.

I'm not the only autocad guy here, but i am the only one who knows how to install, update and support it. Lucky me.

HA!

Welcome from me also.
You have more homework to do than you can imagine.
But I'm a cynic after 6.

[sinc]

Sinc has related his shared his adventures through that special ordeal that was 2006 and then going back for more with 2007.  I have yet to hear anything from him regarding 2008, but it looks like he has installed it and should be able to give you some good advice.

We still use LDT 2007 SP2a.  2008 truncates leading zeros from labels, so bearings end up looking like N 3°5'2" W.  That problem is too annoying to deal with.  It might not be an issue for you if you have custom routines for labeling lines.

There are also issues with annotative text.  I tried using it for a while, and got frustrated trying to figure out how to work around the issues.  Finally decided not to worry about it, and just hope Autodesk fixes the issue in the first SP.  I've heard since that it's usually possible to fix the drawing by running AUDIT when you start to have problems (like text that can't be moved, etc.).

Also noticed that Map topologies seem to be incompatible between 2007 and 2008.  I think the topology was OK when I opened a 2007 drawing in 2008, but the topology was unloadable if I opened a 2008 drawing in 2007.

All in all, there didn't seem to be any good reason to switch, and so the problem with labels decided the issue.  We're still on 2007 SP2a.  (We actually haven't been using LDT too much lately, anyway.  All new projects are being done in C3D, so we're only using LDT to complete some older projects.)

[sinc]

As for the Symbol Manager, I haven't particularly noticed any problems with it, but I do remember I needed to fix a bunch of the blocks when we moved up to 2006.  (I also remember purging that stupid ADCADD_ZZ block out of a bunch of them.)  I didn't do things the same way as you, though - I set the INSUNITS to FOOT for all of them.  We always work with our INSUNITS set to feet - doesn't Land Desktop like to switch it to feet for you?

I can't quite remember the wherefore of it all.  Seems like Land Desktop likes to set units to Feet (INSUNITS=2), so we went with the flow.  I've seen other people use that solution of setting INSUNITS=0 in acaddoc.lsp, and just working unitless for everything, and that makes sense.  I was simply trying to use the feature the way Autodesk intended it, and after doing it the way I have for a while now, I have not seen any real good reason.  The Unitless solution seems like it should be perfectly OK.

The whole reason behind this thing was that Autodesk tried to make it so that objects would scale correctly when inserted between drawings of different units.  So a drawing done in meters could be inserted into a drawing done in feet, which could be inserted into a drawing done in inches, etc., and everything would scale automagically.  But when they did this, they didn't fully appreciate what it would do to the existing symbol libraries.  And they didn't implement the whole process correctly, anyway.  Here in Colorado, we use US Survey Feet, which are NOT the same thing as International Feet.   The way Autodesk implemented things, the autoscaling thing only understands International Feet, which means it produces incorrect results here in Colorado.

In 2007, the new problem was that Plot Style and Lineweight did not work correctly when set to ByBlock.  This is something you only notice if you use Named Plot Styles.  But when 2007 came out, I had to go through all our blocks AGAIN, and change the Plot Style of all the linework from ByBlock to ByLayer.  I also had to change the Lineweight either to a preset value or to ByLayer.  When objects inside of blocks in 2007 have Plot Style or Lineweight set to ByBlock, they get their settings from Layer 0, instead of the block.  So to keep everything plotting correctly, we had to forgo the flexibility of the ByBlock option, and set everything to ByLayer.

Then, when we started getting into C3D, we had to redo our blocks AGAIN...  But that's a different topic.   

[Onetrack]

We always work with our INSUNITS set to feet - doesn't Land Desktop like to switch it to feet for you?

With us insunits defaults to 6, metres - but the source unit is always its default drawing scale - I prefer to bring in everything unitless - which you can specify under tools - options. Since the original block was done at 1:40" they always scale way too big.

Yes.. but thats a pain since I'm in Canada and we don't work in feet. A lot of our old drawings were done in quadraticals and feet, but now we're on the metric system and north azimuths. Makes life a whole WHOLE lot simpler.

I have a really nice bearing in feet code for you guys tho.

As for the Symbol Manager, I haven't particularly noticed any problems with it, but I do remember I needed to fix a bunch of the blocks when we moved up to 2006.

The symbol manager seems to ignore the scaling, with the tool palettes I can set the old blocks which were originally drawn at 1:1000 / 1"=40" to come in at 1:1 and then use the dimension scale sub to properly scale them, the symbol manager has no provisions for doing dimension scales.

 
Uhm.. this posting might be really disjointed.. but its pretty late and its the weekend.