Flatten

Flattens 2D and 3D entities: projects the entities onto the XY-plane of the current view.

Although the command can be executed in any view orientation, the result makes sense in a top view only.

From left to right: pyramid, cone, 3D polyline, spline

Isometric view of the entities after executing the Flatten command in top view.

The pyramid is converted to a square with its diagonals; the cone becomes a circle, with a point in the center; the 3D polyline and the spline are converted to a 2D polyline.

Accessing the Command

command bar: flatten

menu bar: Modify | Flatten

toolbar: Modify |

: flatten

Prompts you in the command bar:

Select entities [new ucs ELevation/allow EXplode]: (Choose one or more entities, or choose an option.)

Entities in set: 1

Select entities [new ucs ELevation/allow EXplode]: (Choose more entities, or press Enter to end entity selection.)

The selected entities are flattened.

Command Options

Option	Description
Select entities to flatten	Chooses the entities to be flattened. The entities will be projected onto the XY plane of the current view. In top view, the entities will be projected onto the XY-plane of the current coordinate system (WCX or UCS).
New UCS elevation	Specifies the new elevation for the 2D polylines in the selection set. The elevation and thickness can be changed with the Elev command.
Explode	Allows compound entities, such as 3D solids, to be exploded.

Related Commands

Elev - sets the thickness and elevation of entities.

FlatShot - creates a hidden line representation of all 3D solids in model space as a block or a new drawing.

Section - creates 2D region slices of 3D solid models.

SolidEdit - creates 2D entities from 3D solid models.

Solprof - creates a hidden line representation of 3D solids in a layout viewport.