Flat

In AutoCAD there are several ways to make a flat contour from a solid: section planes, FlatShot and SolProf commands. But they are all very limited and have so many drawbacks. Maybe it will show you the best. A>V>C> Flat command can roll out any drawings to the plane, all AutoCAD objects.

FLT has the following advantages and features:

• • Works without preliminary preparation, does not ask for anything superfluous, projects everything on the XY plane directly under the place where the original object was.

  • Do not clap windows, do not open dialogues.

  • It works with a lot more objects, besides 3d-Solid: Mesh, PolyFaceMesh, Surface, Region, Body, Face will turn into lines.

  • The program will design any curves on XY, both three-dimensional and flat (not aligned on XY).

  • Converts exotic Polyline2d, Polyline3d to regular polylines.

  • If you accidentally scattered the texts in different planes, the program will help to transfer all annotations to the XY plane without distortion.

  • The program gets inside of blocks, arrays and external references and flattens all suitable objects inside them.

  • At end nothing should be explode any more, no blocks are created.

  • Works in the current UCS user coordinate system, and so you can easily redirect the projection to the current view or on the face of solid.

  • The results are redistributed on layers MD_Visible and MD_Hidden, but this can be turned off.

  • The line weight is assigned ByLayer, and not zero, as FlatShot mistakenly does.

  • The program resets to zero the pseudo-three-dimensional property "Thickness" for all lines, polylines, 2d-solids.

  • In the process of long-term work, a progress bar is shown.

  • The original object can be deleted if you want it.

It is convenient to use this command to get layouts of rooms according to the drawings obtained by exporting from 3ds Max (from all kinds of Meshes and strange 2d-polylines).

The program can be used to prepare contours for drawing in solid - Z-twisted splines and polylines become flat and suitable for Extrude.

The FLT command is part of the A>V>C> Pro package and is called by the LAY command at the end of the job, when the FLATSHOT option is configured.

BricsCAD can not make FlatShot from solids, so I had to create a simplified algorithm that projects the edges of solids. I can not determine the visibility of edges and create silhouettes of surfaces.

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.

Then you can activate one of the licenses:

• • Annual license - 10 EUR.

  • Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.

  • The trial period is 20 days.

Before calling the command, you need to rotate the object so that it is projected along the Z axis. But you can reverse the coordinate system (UCS) for proper projection or select a new coordinate system. It is convenient to use the current view coordinate system (_UCS _V) or the face of the solid (_UCS _F).

Then select the objects. There can be many. And call FLT. If nothing else is selected, the program will prompt you to select the objects.

In the request there are options for setting:

• • DeleteSources - Delete objects from which the flatshot is made, or leave them in the drawing. By default, the source objects are deleted.

  • MAxMesh - when working with meshes, Autocad can hang for minutes and hours if the mesh is too complex. The MaxMesh parameter specifies the maximum number of triangles in mesh with which the program will work. More complex meshes will be skipped. Default is 10000. Enter 0, in order not to limit the size of meshes and check AutoCAD for durability.

  • LAYerManagement - enable or disable layer management. When option is enabled, all new objects are redistributed to MD_Visible and MD_Hidden layers. If there are no such layers, the program will try to load them from the template or create new ones. With the option disabled, the lines remain in the layer of the original object, and the invisible ones are repainted in green.

  • HIddenShow - Show or hide invisible edges of solids and closed meshes

You can interrupt the delayed work by pressing ESC.

For some meshes it is impossible to take into account the visibility of faces and edges and the program simply projects all the edges of the mesh as visible.

Annotations are not projected, but transferred to the XY plane and then unfolded into a plane. This is useful for texts, MLeader and tables, but it leads to a violation of the binding dimensions to objects. Do not use FLT to move the dimensions.

Layer management and a layer template can be specified in the Common Options.