Extruding Lines

[Jim Giacchi]

I have a map of my school that is comprised of lines in Autocad 2002 and I'm trying to turn it into a 3D model with the ultimate purpose of making somekind of walkthrough. However when I tried to extrude I highlight the lines and it says that it can not extrude the objects. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Madison]

Originally posted by Jim Giacchi
I have a map of my school that is comprised of lines in Autocad 2002 and I'm trying to turn it into a 3D model with the ultimate purpose of making somekind of walkthrough. However when I tried to extrude I highlight the lines and it says that it can not extrude the objects. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

...with my limited AutoCAD knowledge...

It sounds as if it's constructed with lines rather than plines. What I'd try (save the file as something you can ruin, first, please) is the 'pedit' command.

Type pedit.
Choose a line.
It'll ask if you'd like to make it a pline. Select yes.
Choose join.
Click *all* of the lines you want to make into plines, forming a complete polygon.

Try extruding that. That should work for you, but it'll extrude into solid blocks. You can't walk through solid blocks.

For the whole building, I'd make one large polyline for the outside walls, and then make the halls and rooms into a smaller, interior polyline.

Extrude both, and then use 'subtract' to cut out the rooms and things.

It's not a perfect way of doing things, but it should work okay. It's not *horribly* detailed, but it could be, if you're willing to put the work into it.

[Clark Gilbert]

I have an AutoCAD class tomorrow...i'll print this out and show it to the teacher to see if he has any ideas if Michaels idea's dont work....

[Jim Giacchi]

I tried that and it did not seem to work. It would not add all of the lines to shape but only one or two. I've attached the drawing so you can take a look and see if anything can be done.

[Clark Gilbert]

I'm not very keen with 3d objects in AutoCAD, but one thing i would try to do with a program similar to Inventor (i lean towards Solid Edge) would be to make a large "block" then sketch all the walls/pathways on top of the solid and "cut or subtract" those sketches down to the base of the solid to create the walls....who knows...just some food for thought...

[Madison]

Originally posted by Jim Giacchi
I tried that and it did not seem to work. It would not add all of the lines to shape but only one or two. I've attached the drawing so you can take a look and see if anything can be done.

Okay, thanks

I'll take a look at it and see what's up

EDIT -

Okay, I see what your problem is.

The 'walls' were just drawn as single lines. They have no depth to them.

Did you draw this? ...or was it given to you?

If it doesn't need to be accurate, there are some things you can do to save it and make it into three dimensions. If it needs to be accurate, it might be easier to start over.

To explain things further:

A solid object as three dimensions. It has length, height, and width. A line only has one of those dimensions. In this case, it's length. You need at least two dimensions before you can extrude into a third.

To fix it?

The easy way is to choose an arbitrary wall thickness, say 2", and use the offset command. That'll make a line parallel to your selection but 2" away. Do this to the *whole* map until everything is a rectangle or polygon. Then, use pedit, and then extrude them.

EDIT - again - The units are also really weird. The whole building is 7.6 units long. . .what kind of units?

[Clark Gilbert]

I went through part of that map and made the walls "rectangles"...here is was i came out with...

[Jim Giacchi]

First off that picture looks sweet.

To answer you questions I just pulled those numbers out of thin air and just drew it how i thought it should look by looking at a map drawn by hand close to propably 1971.

In retrospect (I love hindsight) I should have done the entire thing in feet and gone for actual dimensions but that would have made to much sense.

Edit - I should change my tag to draw first

If I were starting over what would be the best way to go about it? And if I'm not what did you do to get that picture.