fryeguy

It appears there is an issue with some DWG files generated by Autodesk vertical platform products. Vertical platform products include AutoCAD Architecture, Autodesk Building Systems, AutoCAD Electrical, and formerly Architectural Desktop, among others.

These vertical products use a concept known as custom objects that are native to the vertical application. This means these objects are not part of the AutoCAD object model. AutoCAD and virtually any other product that can read & write a DWG file will have difficulty with custom objects.

Autodesk came up with a brilliant solution (read not so brilliant) called object enablers. An object enabler is to AutoCAD what the Flash plug-in is to your browser. The object enabler allows AutoCAD to at least correctly view and usually print custom objects from vertical platforms. So far so good.

Try following the advice I and others have provided in posts relating to importing CAD files into Visio. Often times this works without any problems. Other times, custom objects render your file virtually unusable if you can import it at all.

So what do we do? I recommend to choices:

1. If time is of the essence, contact the person who provided the file created in a vertical platform application and request they open the file in the native application. Then they can use the "Save as AutoCAD DWG" command which should strip out custom objects. This limits the fancy functionality gained by the vetical platform, which you really didn't have anyway, while still allowing you to work with the file. Keep in mind that some custom objects may appear a little differently once this takes place.

2. The other option is to use the quick select tool to methodically select custom objects and then explode them. Sometimes the extreme of this is to select all objects and explode them. Repeat this until there are no objects to explode. Then PURGE the drawing and AUDIT the drawing. This will clean it up a bit. A final task that will help limit the file size is WBLOCK. This will allow you to take the entire drawing and write it to a new DWG file. This will only take with it thenecessary data to recreate the drawing.

*** Don't forget to backup your file before trying any of these techniques. ***

I would be very interested to hear of any othe D-Tools user's experience with custom objects and Autodesk vertical platforms.

fryeguy

Am I the only user who gets CAD files that can't be imported into Visio?

kfought

No I have one that is drawn in 3D and I am having trouble getting it to flatten out.