Map Inquiry Commands: “Unknown Command”

This is a fairly common question that we get here in Product Support. In Civil 3D we inherit the AutoCAD inquiry commands, and if you notice the AutoCAD Inquiry commands are the exact same as found in the Map Inquiry commands in the two Map workspaces. They perform essentially the same function, and with a bit of editing the CUIX file, you can get rid of that pesky “unknown command”. First we will need to launch the CUI dialog by typing CUI on the command line. For this example I will be using the Line and Arc Information. In your current workspace expand PARTIAL CUSTOMIZATION FILES>TASKBASEDRIBBON>MENU>ANALYZE>INQUIRY, then select Line and Arc Information. Notice in the right hand side of the dialog the properties of this command are displayed. The macro will be show ^C^C_mapcglist, you are going to want to change the macro field by  removing the “map” portion of this command, so it will read ^C^C_cglist. After doing so you can apply and close the CUI dialog box. Test out your new Line and Arc Information button within the Task-based Geospatial workspace and you will notice that this command now does not yield the unwanted “unknown command” message.

You will need to follow this same process for the other Map Inquiry commands such as Angle Information, Continuous Distance, Add Distances, List Slope, etc. if you don’t want the “unknown command” when using these commands from the Map workspaces.