Thanks list friends (Jeff Jenness,Bob Plummer, Dr. Giampaolo Fusato,Vishanth
Singh,Rodrigo Souza Barneche and Christopher Hickin).

Original Question:
I have just opened a dwg file in AV3.2 and converted it to a shapefile then
tried to run the Addxycoord script. It turns out my shapes are PointZ's and
not Points. I checked the Knowledge Base but couldn't find out what this
means. Also, when I try to edit the new shapefile, start editing is greyed
out. Even when I convert a subset of that shapefile to a shapefile I get the
same problems. Any suggestions?


Solutions:
        PointZ is a 3D shape type where each point has an elevation (or "Z"
coordinate) along with
the X- and Y-Coordinates.  There area also PolygonZ's and PolylineZ's, and
unfortunately none of
them have clear descriptions in the help files (from Jeff).
        There are various ways to overcome this -  Dr. Fusato sent me the script
view_con3_2.ave, Rodrigo sent me LineZ-Line.ave; Vishanth suggested the
EditTools demo from the ArcScripts page, and Cristopher told me about
stripzm from ArcScripts. (Christopher's comments: this is not a 'normal'
shapefile but one where the actual shape type is different
-- it is representing elevation data. "STRIPZM" will convert this to a
regular shapefile. You can then use the "z" field as an attribute if you
want to callout your xy theme with the elevations they represent.)

I won't have a chance to try these until I return from the Canadian
Cartographic Association (http://www.geog.ubc.ca/cca/index1.html) conference
in Montreal that runs from Wednesday to Sunday of this week. Once I have had
a chance to try them, I will let you know which of the scripts I like the
best.

Thanks again

Rick