Saving 2013 to 2010

[HuntPA]

We are working in 2013 Civil 3D. The client has 2011. When I am saving the drawing back to 2010 version, it gives me an error stating that the 3D components will not transfer and will be proxy images. This means that I am losing my alignments, surfaces, profiles, and sections. Exporting a LandXML gives me the surfaces and alignments, but I still lose the profiles and sections.

I even tried this with a drawing that was completely made with 2011. When I went to save, I got the same message even though the 3D components were made in the 2010 format. I have had the same issues whether I do a save as, change the config to 2010 dwg, or export.

Any help out there?

 

[francesca]

There are two issues here, the AutoCAD file format for standard CAD objects (lines, polylines, arcs, text) and the Civil 3D format for the "intelligent" content. Civil 3D is not backwards compatible. You can change the AutoCAD version of the CAD objects, but you can't change the Civil 3D object. Saving back to 2010 with Proxygraphics set to 1 (enabled) will let the client see what the 2013 profiles, profile views, labels, corridors, pipe networks, sections, etc. look like, but not edit them and the data won't be available to them.

You cannot convert your data from 2013 to 2011, so the sooner you do the LandXML conversion, the better. You get a warning message telling you to the effect of no backwards compatibility when you open an older version file. It's a tough break, but it has been this way since the second release of the product. (Revit is not even backwards compatible to a service pack.)

LandXML will give you profiles, but not sections. (Actually, it will in xml, but not in a way that's re-importable.) Keep the 2013 file around so you can use as much linework, etc. as possible for corridor targets and copy directly your corridor stationing. Then shoot the person who suggested moving to 2013, as well as the project manager who didn't check the electronic deliverable requirement.