Trimble Business Center

I just imported a dwg with Aecc contours and lost all of the data from the contours and spot grades. Is there a way of handling this without having Civil3D?

It looks like I lost contours and spot grades. 

Civil3D

TBC

I would also like to know if there's a way to handle this without Civil3d. Very annoying to need Civil3d to be able to import into Business Center. 

Any movement on this option?

Following on this one. 

In Autocad, before you save your file, set PROXYGRAPHICS=1 (type PROXYGRAPHICS at the command prompt and set it to 1), and then save the file. Then import the drawing again and the proxy objects should import into TBC.

tim

Please see the attached video. I tried that originally and retried this morning and that did not work. Despite turning proxygraphics to 1, the contours and other AECC content are still not imported into TBC.

I've had this issue. Try exporting Civil 3d Drawing after setting proxygraphics to 1. It can take a while but it always works for me.

Thanks Tim,

I don't have Autocad Civil 3d so am wondering if there is anything coming from Trimble on a better way to handle the import. Agtek is able to handle those items better but i lose all layering when importing to Agtek first and then exporting a .dxf to import into Trimble.

I think we are all hoping that Trimble will be able to come up with something to process these items.

Thanks for all your help!

I am getting the lines when I import your file.  Not all of the layers are on in your video.  Make sure the layer of these lines are on.  If you don't see them then do a seach by layer and select the layer to see if the objects are there but not displaying.  If you don't fine a reason then import the file into a new project.  If you still don't see why then send me your VCE project after the dwg has been imported.

tim

Please see the attached files.

When you open both in Civil3D you can see the AECC objects. When you import the one labled -not working you cannot see the contours in TBC. When you import the one labeled not working you cannot see the aecc contours. Both have proxygraphics set to 1. 

In the zip is the VCE with the dwg that is not working imported. 

The files are different size and definitely one works and the other doesn't.  The larger file has the contours.  Both have proxygraphics=1.

What version of civil 3d was used to create each one?

Are you using the civil 3D export or just saveas?

I was using "saves as". I had run into some issue with the export and crashing. I was running 2017 for a while so this could have been a file that got corrupted. Although I resaved it today from 2020 so you would think it would get updated and work. 

I will try a few things tomorrow. and let you know. It may just be a fluke from an old corrupted file. 

I appreciate you keeping the cost down but at the same time I still have to purchase a license to Civil 3D @ $2,200/year to extract this data. Even with proxygraphics, you need to have Civil3D to change this or ask the engineer, sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't. 

Not only am I paying for two software programs, one simply just to export data, but I also need to know my way around multiple software. I don't know what the cost would be but it may offset the cost of running two programs. We use to run Carlson and we had very minimal conversion issue because it was running on top of the Autodesk engine. 

Maybe a separate module that users could choose? Advance import that recognizes data from the other big players. 

Your best bet is to export a landxml from Civil3d then import that to TBC.  That's what we do.

File>export>export to landxml  choose surface.  Then drag and drop into TBC.

That is if they have modeled in 3D. If they have not, this won't help you.

Then the answer is no.  You can't expect every software to be compatible in their native format.  This is where the Landxml format comes in, especially for surfaces. 

It helps but it needs to be updated.

Amazingly Landxml exports from CIvil3d work just fine even though landxml schema is from 2008.  We have very little issues with this process.  The only issues we occasionally run into is that oddly shaped surfaces can react strangely in TBC.  Nothing a little cleanup can't take care of.