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. A>V>C> Flat (FLT) command can roll out any drawings to the plane, all drawing 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, PolygonMesh, 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.

  • Can work in the current user coordinate system UCS, 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.

  • Can immediately call the Outside Loop (OSL) program for the visible contours of each object.

  • 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.

  • The name and description of the solidus is transferred to all its contours.

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

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

  • You can set up to nine offset styles with different settings and then quickly switch styles directly from the command line. Or from a macro on a homemade button.

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 program is not designed to make flat drawings from 3D assemblies of many solids. It works with each solid separately and all parts hidden behind will be drawn with visible lines. For assemblies use viewports or the _ViewBase command, not FLT.

There is a bug in the BricsCAD API - it is not possible to make casts. Therefore, the program operates according to a simplified algorithm, projecting the edges of solids. Therefore, BricsCAD does not have the ability to determine the visibility of edges and create surface silhouettes.

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.

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance 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:

• SwitchStyle - quickly switch between 9 presets.

• TUNE - call the configuration dialog.

• 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. This setting is common to all other mesh commands.

• 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.

• TAngentialShow - Show tangency edges of solids (imprinted in the plane).

• CONTOURS - Call the program Outside Loop to close and optimize the external contour of each part. The program will remove all curve overlays and replace the layers with the layers of the current NC Preparation settings. The program does not optimize invisible contours (rear edges of solids). The option will only work if you have a license for the program Outside Loop.

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.

You can also configure the program from the A>V>C> Options Palette.