Solved! by AllenJessup. See the answer in context.
Kudo. .
Autodesk has confirmed that Partial Open does NOT work on any drawing that has AEC objects in it. It should work on a drawing that was created in Basic AutoCAD. But once that drawing is saved from Civil 3D it wont work.
A request has been sent to update future Civil 3D help files to make this clear.
Allen
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Solved! by AllenJessup. See the answer in context.
Kudo. .
A final word. I was still having problems with partial open even when the drawing was created by the basic version of AutoCAD that came with IDSP. Autodesk support traced the problem to the fact that the Civil 3D Object Enabler is installed during the installation of IDSP. The only way to create a drawing in base AutoCAD from IDSP is to turn DEMANDLOAD off. Then create a new drawing.