Message - The alignment has a zero length: - <Alignment Name>

Problem

After creating alignments, a message displays whenever a Civil Site Design command is run

 The alignment has a zero length: - <alignment name>. Please redo the alignment.

No other commands will run.

Issue

The issue is that at least one alignment has been created but it has no geometry (zero length).  This can often happen in Civil 3D, where you use the Create Alignment command, name and create an alignment, the escape out of the edit alignment toolbar.  The result is a named alignment with no geometry (zero length).

Unfortunately the way the Civil 3D API (programmers interface) works, Civil Site Design cannot proceed until the zero length alignment is removed

Solution

The solution is to remove the alignment.  The easiest way to do this is to open the Civil 3D Toolspace (Home Panel > Palettes > Toolspace):

• Expand the Alignment node (possibly you may also need to expand Sites, then visit each Site and expand Alignments in there, if you have created alignments in sites)
• Click on Centerline Alignments (possibly you will need to pick the other alignment types as well, if you added alignments as different Types)
• In the split view, you should see the alignments listed in a spreadsheet layout that are Centerline type alignments
• Look for the Length column (you can click on the Length column to sort by length) and find the alignment/s with zero length
• Right click on each of these zero length alignments in the list view and select Delete

Once this is done, you will have full functionality of Civil Site Design again and the message will not display