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I have imported a designer .dgn file.  Cleaned it up and sent the .dxf linework file out to the field.  I then get this picture from my guys.

Here is that same line before he selects it:

After seeing this I looked into my TBC file.  What I found was this hidden property on that line.

Now the big issue besides the layout problem is I am unable to find a way to check for this property on a project wide selection.  Instead I have to check each line one by one.  Only a few lines have this property.  The majority do not.  The only way I have been able to fix these is to draw a "dummy" line next to the line.  Then join the new line to the funky one.  And then break the dummy line off and delete it.  

Is there some sort of way to remove this UCS property on mass?  Or at least be able to quickly find the ones with this property to fix manually?  I found this issue on a few lines of barrier after I did a project cleanup.  What happened there was the lines were removed from the correct location and the easting now had a negative in front so it basically became a westing.  And was in the wrong northing.  LOL.  

Any help from the community would be awesome.

Tysen

PS:  I've attached a .vcl of my linework if someone wants to take a look.

PSS:  Won't let me attach my .dxf field linework file......

Current Version (v5.1) there is no easy way to find all lines with a UCS - we have just added to Advanced Select a UCS as a property you can use to select all Linestrings with a UCS so that you can find them. We also just added length of a polyline also in the same way.

There is a hidden command called "CorrectCADLinestringOCS" that I am told can in some cases "fix linestrings that have UCS" but I have not tried it and my development buddies have not told me that it is fully working or not. The command has no UI - just select the line(s) you want to correct - press F12 and type in this command - it worked on your data for the one UCS Line that I found (without the fix above ....) - time for the Design Houses to come up with another way to mess with us ...

There is currently no way to correct a linestring with a UCS other than to draw it again - however bear in mind that a true arc in an inclined plane is not a true arc in 2D - so you may see some differences in geometry here - chording the arc is the only real way to create a 2D path that follows the inclined arcs. The above hidden gem may be the answer - let me know if it works for you.

Try this hidden command at your own risk (it is hidden for a reason ....) - you still have to hunt down these UCS lines - I know how much you all like a Treasure Hunt!

One other little tidbit I picked up is that there are different UCS's - apparently a UCS can only be used to define a Right Hand Curve so to define a Left Hand Curve our buddies at Bentley use a UCS that has X=0, Y=0 and Z=-1 (so they flip a Right Hand Curve upside down to create a Left Hand Curve. These UCS in the first place are created because neither AutoCAD or Bentley can define an Arc in 3D unless they draw the Arc in a plane - which means they cannot add a Vertical Curve into a horizontal arc element ...,. No wonder many engineers don't like designing Intersections

Kudos to the Smart TBC Developers who have this cracked using VPIs and Vertical Curves in our super smart linestring objects so when we build the data from scratch we don't have these issues

Have a great weekend hunting down UCS linework ((apologies it is getting late now and this mornings coffee has worn off!)

Thank you so much for your detailed answer.  I will try out that command and report back.  I've been doing data prep for over 15 years and this is the first time I have run into this issue.  Out of the 1300+ lines from the .dgn I have currently found about 30 with this specific property.  Once again, thank you for your response and all of your help!

Tysen

I'm struggling here too with the UCSs, apparently coming from Bentley Microstation. Seem like neither of the above worked with v5.10:

- No property of UCS (or BKS in German) show up in Advanced select to choose as > no chance to find them other then clicking 10'000 Objects manually

- the command CorrectCADLinestringOCS doesn't do anything, not even a message

- converting to a linestring doesn't do anything either

- most of the lines with UCS I've found are straight lines, no curves at all

Attached is the VCL, if of interest...

Seems like I've found some sort of workaround:

Try to export to a SketchUp File and reimport. That will kill the UCS Attrikbut but also the layering, so maybe you want to export layer by layer...

I was looking into your .vcl.  I found a few curves that had it as well.  I tried that command on the curve and it basically chords the curve.  The curve I found was near:  4148635.6  8800453.4

In case you want to look at this one object.  

I did find that if you have a non UCS line and you join it to a line with the UCS it will remove the UCS property.  Might be helpful.....

Tysen

The problem with all this is that CAD Systems like AutoCAD and Microstation

cannot draw a line that is an ARC in 2D but ha 3D Geometry. To get this

they basically have to draw the ARC on an inclined plane - that then allows

the ARC to remain and arc in the plane of the plane and have elevations

that are not planar (in the standard coordinate system of a Site project

(flat / horizontal plane). The problem with this is that the ARC is no

longer an ARC in the Horizontal Plane and the only way to represent it is

to chord the arc. However if you just remove the UCS and make the ARC 2D,

it will likely now not touch the other linework at its end points (ie it

will be off) by how much is dictated by the inclination of the UCS plane so

you cannot "just remove the UCS" "and hope that everything just works".

This is a "Hack" to fix a "Hack" being used by AutoCAD and Microstation to

create 3D linework. There are times when a UCS makes sense in AutoCAD or

Microstation - eg Building Facades etc. where the ARC is in a Vertical

plane aligned to a wall of the building, or in Mechanical Engineering or

Solid Component Design, however for SIte Modeling it is a complete hack,

and while we support it, it does make things hard for all other

computations down stream.

Alan

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 1:08 PM tellison@wadsco.com <trimble@jiveon.com>

"Hack to fix a Hack".

Priceless !!!!!

I got that, thank you Alan. All though I understand it's not easy to fix this "hackaton" it leads to a lot of issues with machine control, site positionning, SiteVision, etc. At least an option to search, filter and find the relevant few lines with UCSs within the thenthousands of other lines within a project in TBC would be much appreciated... :-D

That secret command worked for the issues I was having. Thanks for that tip. That would be great if we could incorporate that into the project cleanup command. 

I second the idea of putting it in the project cleanup command.  Anytime I have a UCS problem, I open the CAD in Carlson, and do a project cleanup.  That always has fixed the problem for me, but I am certainly going to try the hidden command next time.

So I tested Andys file - the tool we added to Advanced Select (that finds the Object Types with a UCS) - it isolated 1643 objects and the Hidden Tool listed above corrected about 500 of those to remove the UCS. Those that were left I have packaged into a VCL file and given it to development to take a look at. 

If any of you out there have files with UCS in them that you want me to test out as we try to fix this issue please add them to this post / thread so I can grab, test and extract the problem lines so I can get them into the Dev Team ASAP. I will try to get a tool into TBC 5.2 to help you address this (the Advanced Select is already updated for 5.2) ad the OCS tool at worst will be there and hopefully made into a command and also made to work on more UCS types. 

Can any of you tell me specifically what is failing in the field with these UCS lines i.e. which products and what is the failure (i.e. what is not working or giving incorrect results etc. I need to raise this to the GCS/Earthworks and SiteWorks teams as needed but need something to tell them to look at). While we may fix this in TBC - and I agree Project Cleanup is the right place to do this - that means to clean up CAD Data for the field you will need a full license of TBC that has the Project Cleanup command in it.

Alan

Used that same data:

• SiteVision: will simply not display anything except a line, couldn't figure out which one though. I guess you would like to talk to @Mark Nichols
• SiteWorks/SCS900: couldn't find an issue on this data but seen similar cases as @Tysen Ellison mentioned and posted earlier on this thread. Maybe use their data?
• GCS900/EarthWorks: same as for SiteWorks/SCS900 with my data

Here is the OG .dxf file my field guys had where they found the initial problem.

UCS line at:

3562475.0

1501670.0

One in my OG post:

3563045.0

1501955.0

Hopefully this will help you see the issue inside Siteworks/SCS900.

Tysen

Hi Alan,

I have a very simple dxf exported from Microstation. 

Cannot get the UCS removed using the "hacks" described here.

Anders

There is a macro called "Convert To Linestring", and I believe it will remove the UCS.

That function is there but not released yet - it will be out in May

Alan

Sent from my iPhone

Send me the file - we have an updated TML we are releasing in May that takes care of this - I can fix and send back and use it as another test before release

Alan

Sent from my iPhone

Hi Alan,

The file should be in the zip above.  Attaching it here again.

Thanks,

Anders

I don't specifically have a failure in the field.  My problem is when I am building a model and am trying to clean up CAD data.  I will want to do something like delete all of the CAD data outside of my scope of work, and I sometimes can't because some of the linework is on different UCS's.  I will draw a box around my site and select everything outside of it to delete, but I can't.  It doesn't happen often, but it throws a wrench into everything when it does.

That is great feedback Michael - I logged that in as a defect that we should fix (that helps me a lot).

The Advanced Select addition to find them at least helps to isolate them, and in the ones that I looked at it is crazy - many of the lines were just lines - no Arcs at all - so instead of drawing a Vertical Line they draw it as a line with a UCS and each line in the test I looked at had its own UCS i.e. they were all different - god help us if Bentley and Autodesk are the leaders in the industry ....

Alan

Being able to set the UCS to World always seems to fix the problem in my situation.

Where are you doing that - in TBC? or in the source Program?

Alan

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 8:25 AM michael@takeoffpros.com <trimble@jiveon.com>

I use the project cleanup in Carlson Civil for that.

OK thanks

Alan

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 9:00 AM michael@takeoffpros.com <trimble@jiveon.com>

That trick doesn't appear to work on CAD text unfortunately. Running into this issue on one of our projects where the foreman would load up a project in Siteworks and things would zoom way out. Come to find out it is due to CAD text with UCS coordinates.

Issues text is on layer: X-EP-Text

Tried to upload the dxf but getting an error message that it is too large. only 5.7 mb.

Can you email me the TextDXF File Pat

Alan

Anders - Here is a link to a VCE file with UCS removed

https://community.trimble.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadBody/35274-102-1-45576/Anders+-+UCS+Removed.vce.zip 

Thanks a lot Alan - we will be looking forward to the new function in May