Autodesk writer error

My guess is the ‘symbol table name’ is too long. Use your feature information window to inspect a feature that has this table name column exposed as an attribute. Perhaps even use an AttributeLengthCalculator on this field to understand what the max char length is of this field. Seems 2023 FME writes to a new version of the AutoCad format where the table length has a maximum.

Other things that help the community troubleshoot:

• A small sample of your data, or screenshots of the data in the FME Data Inspector
• A description of your expected output, with screenshots if possible
• Your FME workspace, ideally saves as an FMWT if possible
• Your FME translation log file

Hi ​@j.botterill ,

Thanks for the reply.

I have no ‘symbol table name’ that I know of. The below screenshot contains all the columns in my file, and the are no unexposed ones. Its something in the dwg writer header. From a few online searches I haven’t found much reference to this table. A symbol is called a block in Autocad so it’s something FME related. In any case my workspace should have no need of it, and it’s never been a problem before.

Before I posted originally I did use the AttributeLengthCalculator to look at the length of the dwg layer names (my expected output is a dwg with some circles on a few different layer names). 1 was above 50 characters, but it has worked with this length before, and even if I exclude features on the same layer it happens. The file does write if I remove a comma out of its name, but I am replacing it with an underscore so its the same length.

I can’t send the workspace unfortunately. Its proprietary. My log file only contains the error I mentioned in my first post.

Here are some screenshots of my feature writer properties.

And here is what the data looks like on the step before the writer

So select one of the records in the map preview or the attribute table.

Then in the popup/open/dock the “Feature Information” window. https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-Form/DataInspector/querying_features.htm You have exposed and unexposed attributes. Typically in CAD all are unexposed by default. Autodesk AutoCAD DWG/DXF format outputs “format attributes” which they are all prefixed with autocad_. From your screen shots I can see you have igds_ format attributes, which may suggest your DWG comes from an older version of the AutoCAD specification.

I was thinking of finding the symbol field in the block header. 

Can you show which version on the writer you are using

https://docs.safe.com/fme/2024.2/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-ReadersWriters/acad/ACAD_writer.htm

Regarding the Template File I can see you using there…. you may need to check this prototype file matches the writer destination version. 

Hi ​@j.botterill ,

There are no unexposed attributes on these features. They were created in my workspace. The igds attribute name actually refers to Microstation. I used to write to this until my company moved to the 2023 version. This caused other problems which resolved themselves when I used dwg. In this case the only igds attribute is the layer name, which I assign manually to autocad (so no need to rename it to autocad_layer). As I’ve said this is not where the problem lies as it has worked with these settings many times.

I am using version 2018, which is the same as my template, and is seen in the screenshots above.

I was able to do a little digging just before and I have found the problem. I think anyway. It doesn’t explain why the file worked when I replaced the comma out of the file name.

Anyway, it seems that somehow my workspace created two aggregate geometries. This has never come up before and was a special case. It seems writing to dwg couldn’t handle this. So with a Deagreggator before the writer everything seems to work. At least hopefully

Thanks for your help