Topic Title

Can't find any explanation for this, but every once in
a while we get entities in our files that are on the
order of 1.75e34 for z-heights. This is larger than
the known universe. These entities creep in and with
people that use identify-SetAll, they're all over the
place. v11.08.01. It's been going on for a number of
years. Any ideas?

Welcome to the club. We have been having this problem intermittently for years. Now that we can change the z location of symbols that has solved most of our problems. But when this happens to an XREF it is still a problem.

...every once in a while we get entities in our files that are on the order of 1.75e34 for z-heights. This is larger than the known universe.

Hello Steve,

Probably you are bringing to life drawing files created in old versions of DataCAD, before V. 11. Do you ?
Lately this kind of problem is no more usual.

It was actually a problem with old DOS versions, when you were entering a Z-height or coordinate, and before confirm it, you decide to erase the value, confirming without a number in the prompt. DataCAD would "catch" the virtual (zero) as an infinite number.

That's why it reaches Andromeda or some neighbour...
It is usualy an old symbol.

In the case, if you can separate it, explode it and do the Change Z-Base/Z-Hite and save it again.

HTH,
Miguel

Probably you are bringing to life drawing files created in old versions of DataCAD

I have found this to be the reason every time that I've had a Z-base or height extend to infinity like that.

I'm sure it isn't always tied to using old files. We've been using DataCAD
since '93, and many symbols and detail files have been around since then.
But... it has happened with completely new, v11 files, with the default
files being created in v11. They often show up attached to x-refs. I've
experienced it with title block x-refs, where the same title block is inserted
into many files, and everything is v11. But, some of these title blocks will
have these z-heights, some won't.

It's always 10e33 or 10e34. I've never seen a different power of 10.
Gremlins?

I have seen many different powers of 10 including e27, e29 etc. I have never been able to tie it to ACAD import, curved leader macros or anything else. Also, Miguel may be correct but I do not remember seeing it happen in any DOS version and I don't remember seeing it before version 9 or 10 I believe. Datacad has fixed the change command to allow you to change the insertion z-base of a symbol and this has solved most but not all of our problems with this phenomenon.

Okay, did some research on this latest occurrance. I found
an entity in the title block (part of an exploded symbol),
and the title block was X-ref'd into the file in question.
The entity has a z-height of -4.397767e33. But for some reason,
the z-height of the inserted X-ref is -1.759107e34. This
z-height is then duplicated onto random entities within the
file. I plopped the original symbol down and the z-height of
the entity in question is -3.518213e33. The original symbol
and the exploded one may not be from the same source, but all
this is bizarre. I also checked other files from this project
and there are numerous occurrances of z-base and z-height as
reading "overflow."

I know that this has occurred at other times without this one
symbol being inserted, as the X-ref itself has a wild z-height.
Could a bad entity cause a bad z-height through an X-ref?