Text to COGO – back again… (Part 1)

Hi there,

This issue is coming back to me again and again…  ;-)

Customers with C3D installed are asking how to get an ordinary ACAD text object in to a COGO with Z elevation.

This first post will show how to set the correct Z-value to the text objects. (Those can later be used as source data for a Surface)

Here is one way (I am sure there are several more…   …and also a few intelligent .LSPs out there)

If you have the drawing with your text objects, saved and closed, you create a new drawing for the upcoming result. The new drawing will contain your Z-elevated text objects.

- Here is a screenshot from the drawing containing simple text. Save and close that drawing.

 

- Create a new drawing where the result will be inserted.

- Change to Map 3D Tool-based UI in the bottom right corner

 

- Use the “Home-tab” and attach the drawing containing the text objects you had.

 

- Under the “Create-tab” you will use the “Query-tool”.

 

- In the dialog (on the left part), make sure you use the settings “Location – ALL” and also add “Property – Object type Text”

 

- Under Options, in the same dialog, use “Alter Properties” and (if you like) set color to be different, Layer to be different than the original texts etc)

- Important here is to use “Elevation” as a altered setting. We want the new text objects to end up at a proper Z-elevation and not stay at Z=0 as the original ones.

  

- Select Elevation and then the “Expression-button”. Browse down to Object Properties and further down…

- …until you find “Text” and “Contents”. This will bring the text content (containing information of the proper Z-value to be used) passed over to be used as new Z-value for the new text objects. 

- When we select “Draw” in the main part of this Query dialog we get all texts in with the new, altered, properties (such as color, layer AND z-value)

 

I hope you will see from this that Map is really useful to achieve some tasks that will help us creating C3D input etc from various sources.

Coming up next:  Create a Report to ASCII and read that in as COGO-points (Part 2)

// Ove