Exploded Everything- Why?

[JStephen]

Question for you AutoCAD gurus. On occasion, I'll download a CAD drawing from the internet as .dwg file. I've noticed that invariably, these drawings have no blocks, no polylines, the dimensions are all exploded, etc.- nothing but individual lines or arcs left, really. Why is this done? Were they drawn this way? Is there some advantage to getting them in this form? Is it compatible with Release Zero or something? Just curious, thanks.

 

[xgrigorix]

Since you got them off the internet - we can only guess at the source & you're intent by downloading them - I would guess that someone intentionally wanted that file to be as unuseful as possible.

 

[JStephen]

Sources-

http://www.bilco.com,

http://www.mcmaster.com,

for two examples. Product drawings intended to download and incorporate into other drawings, and pretty useless for anything BUT those specific products.

 

[IFRs]

It converts all the objects to their most primitive form, preserving compatibility with any version of AutoCAD and most versions of alternate software that reads dwg files.

 

[cadnutcase]

Alot of times they were probably generated from some 3D model or some parametric routines or maybe even another CAD program. This way there are simple as possible and everybody can bring them into almost any CAD program these days.