Draw Order Extended

In my last post, I mentioned that I have been working on modifying the Draw Order By Layer command found on the Autodesk Labs Plugin of the month page here. I think I have pretty much perfected it to the best of by ability and for what I wanted it to do.

First, I added additional tabs for other items needed to adjust draw order. The tabs added were XREFs, Blocks, Civil3D Surfaces, and a Checked Items Tab. Now, many of these items could have been moved to a separate layer and then adjusted via the basic Draw Order By Layer tab, but for many of these items, that goes against company standards. We typically put all of our XREFs on one XREF layer and Civil3D surfaces automatically go on one surface layer, so why not just allow for adjustment of these items? The blocks tab was added for me personally as many times I might have the same block on multiple layers and need to adjust accordingly for all instances, thus selecting the block name made sense. The checked items tab I think is the coolest, as it allows for you to work with all object on a selected layer (or multiple layers), XREF objects selected, and blocks selected - and if you think outside the box it will handle all Civil3D surfaces via the layer the surfaces go on. Trust me, I tried to incorporate Civil3D surfaces to this list as well, but Civil3D would crash hard when adjusting - and I'm not sure why.

Here is what the command looks like:

LAYERS TAB

XREFS TAB

BLOCKS TAB

ACAD CHECKED ITEMS TAB
Note the two left buttons. The left one populates a list from the layers, XREFs,
and blocks tab, and the right allows you to remove the items and start over.

C3D SURFACES TAB

HELP MENU

The best workflow I have found with the command is to begin by adjusting your surfaces in the order they should display. You'll see from the image examples below the existing surface was brought over the analysis surface. Once completed rerun the command and select the necessary layers (include the default surface layer), and/or XREFs, and/or Blocks, then go to the Selected Items tab and use the update button on the far left to generate the list of checked items. Re-order everything in the desired order from top to bottom (surfaces most likely at bottom) and you'll see in the last image everything has been updated.

DRAW ORDER BEFORE RUNNING COMMAND

DRAW ORDER AFTER RUNNING SURFACES

DRAW ORDER AFTER RUNNING ALL SELECTED ITEMS

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AutoCAD Civil3D 2011 Version - as shown above
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Zip File
If you are interested in the Zip file for the actual code, you can download from here.

DLL File
If you are interested in the dll file for the plugin command, you can download from here. Then run the NETLOAD command in Civil3D and select the file. The command will runs with the command DOEXT.
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AutoCAD 2011 Version - minus the Surfaces tab shown above
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Zip File
If you are interested in the Zip file for the actual code, you can download from here.

DLL File
If you are interested in the dll file for the plugin command, you can download from here. Then run the NETLOAD command in Civil3D and select the file. The command will runs with the command DOEXT.
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