This post was originally intended to be a description of the new Point File Import Wizard in the Subscription Advantage Pack for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011, but it has morphed into something a little different.
You might be wondering what is so special about the Point File Import Wizard in the Subscription Advantage Pack – I know I was when I first saw it. It didn’t really appear to do anything that the old dialog box did except give you a preview of your points that were going to be imported. However, it is just a little smarter than I gave it credit for. Here’s what it’s supposed to do: You select a point file – you don’t open it to look at the format, you just select it for import. The wizard (appropriately named – the thing is magic!) scans your point file, then it scans the point file formats and matches them up! Not only that, but it shows you the nifty preview at the bottom.
However, today I ran into a problem with it – and with the help of quite a few people, found out the reason and the temporary workaround. Follow the link to find out more.
My user that was having a problem was trying to import a point file that contained user defined properties. What are user defined properties? It’s something not normally contained in a point – you know, point number, point name, northing, easting, elevation, description. It may be the type of fire hydrant, or the species of a tree, or the soil type. Literally, it can be anything. What my user was seeing was that when he tried to import the file using the new import wizard, his program was crashing. I tried it and could reproduce the issue every single time.
After discussing the issue with the user, we determined that it was working when we were using the old point file import dialog box. At this point, I decided to see if it still worked with that old point file import dialog, so I went to the Insert tab of the ribbon, looked on the Import panel, and select Points from File. What did I see? The new wizard! I thought I had made a mistake, so I tried it again – there was no way to access the old dialog!
Now, let’s fast forward through a lot of emails back and forth with the development team. Here’s the end result:
Somewhere in this drawing there are user defined expressions that have been used to compose a point file format. These formats were probably intended to be used for export only, unfortunately we don’t know the intent of the format in the wizard so we treat them all equally. The point import wizard (new import points dialog layout) enumerates the point formats and does a series of test parsing against each file to determine which formats would be compatible. This is where things break down because we aren’t filtering out the expressions when we attempt to parse the values and set attributes.
So the new point file import wizard is unable to tell what the user defined properties are. The good news is that the old dialog works, so we can just use it, right? Well, not exactly – remember, the new wizard replaced that dialog. So how do you get it back?
There are three options:
- Remove the SAP. This can only be done with a clean install of Civil 3D. It’s not the best answer, but it will work.
- Get rid of the user defined properties. That’s why you’re using the functionality, so it’s not really a great answer, is it?
- Get rid of the new point file import wizard and go back to the old one. You can do this by navigating to C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 and renaming a file named AeccUiSap.arx. I suggest renaming it to AeccUiSap_OLD.arx. This will disable the point file import wizard and let you use the legacy dialog. Warning: this option does not come without caveats. There are two more bits of functionality that this will remove as well: you will no longer be able to use the Import Styles and Settings command or the Copy Superelevation command from the Subscription Advantage Pack. The COGO/Traverse Editor will still work, however.
More to come on the Subscription Advantage Pack – stay tuned!
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