Skip to main content
Solved

DWG to DWG increases from 200Mb to 800Mb??

  • August 31, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 68 views
J
Forum|alt.badge.img

Hi everyone,

I am very new to FME having recently downloaded a free trial, so please bear with me.

I work on a civil engineering project and the majority of our design data (AutoCAD 2013 DWG) is on the OSGB36 grid (Ordnance Survey Great Britain).

To transform it to our local site grid I applied a series of modifiers (scaler, rotater, offsetter) then set a writer to output as DWG.

We tested it with the largest of our model files and found that the output file was around 800Mb in size whereas the input file was only 200Mb. Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening?

I am an Engineering Surveyor so I am rather unfamiliar with AutoCAD beyond simple commands & geometry etc, so the settings in the reader / writer don't mean much to me either!

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

John R

Best answer by mark2atsafe

Hi @johnrobson - yes there are a lot of settings in the DWG writer, and it can be hard to know what they do. I looked up a similar case and found these suggestions:

1) By default, FME will expand the blocks in your AutoCAD file into their component parts. To disable this, open the reader Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set Expand Blocks into Entities to No. To write out the actual blocks to another DWG file, you will need a template file for the writer that already has those blocks defined. The easiest method is to use the source file. Open the writer Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set the Template file location to the the source DWG file. Only the header of the template file is used - not any of the actual data.

2) There is another setting for Store Bulge Info, that defaults to No. On this setting, bulged linestrings are stroked, which can also increase the file size. Please try setting this to Yes and see if the file size drops.

3) Also change the settings Read Visible Attributes as Text and Explode MText Entities to No

I can't guarantee these will be the solution, but they are what I would start with first of all.

This post is closed to further activity.
It may be an old question, an answered question, an implemented idea, or a notification-only post.
Please check post dates before relying on any information in a question or answer.
For follow-up or related questions, please post a new question or idea.
If there is a genuine update to be made, please contact us and request that the post is reopened.

3 replies

mark2atsafe
Safer
Forum|alt.badge.img+59
  • mark2atsafeSafer
  • Safer
  • Best Answer
  • August 31, 2017

Hi @johnrobson - yes there are a lot of settings in the DWG writer, and it can be hard to know what they do. I looked up a similar case and found these suggestions:

1) By default, FME will expand the blocks in your AutoCAD file into their component parts. To disable this, open the reader Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set Expand Blocks into Entities to No. To write out the actual blocks to another DWG file, you will need a template file for the writer that already has those blocks defined. The easiest method is to use the source file. Open the writer Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set the Template file location to the the source DWG file. Only the header of the template file is used - not any of the actual data.

2) There is another setting for Store Bulge Info, that defaults to No. On this setting, bulged linestrings are stroked, which can also increase the file size. Please try setting this to Yes and see if the file size drops.

3) Also change the settings Read Visible Attributes as Text and Explode MText Entities to No

I can't guarantee these will be the solution, but they are what I would start with first of all.

FME Evangelist to the Rich and Famous!!
jneujens
Forum|alt.badge.img
  • jneujens
  • September 1, 2017

Hi @johnrobson - yes there are a lot of settings in the DWG writer, and it can be hard to know what they do. I looked up a similar case and found these suggestions:

1) By default, FME will expand the blocks in your AutoCAD file into their component parts. To disable this, open the reader Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set Expand Blocks into Entities to No. To write out the actual blocks to another DWG file, you will need a template file for the writer that already has those blocks defined. The easiest method is to use the source file. Open the writer Parameters in the Navigator pane of Workbench and set the Template file location to the the source DWG file. Only the header of the template file is used - not any of the actual data.

2) There is another setting for Store Bulge Info, that defaults to No. On this setting, bulged linestrings are stroked, which can also increase the file size. Please try setting this to Yes and see if the file size drops.

3) Also change the settings Read Visible Attributes as Text and Explode MText Entities to No

I can't guarantee these will be the solution, but they are what I would start with first of all.

Curious what the result will be!

 

 

J
Forum|alt.badge.img
  • johnrobson
  • Author
  • September 5, 2017

Thanks @Mark2AtSafe - we tried your suggestions and the resulting output is now only around 30Mb larger than the input file, which we can live with.

Community Stats

32,154
Posts
122,047
Replies
39,812
Members

Latest FME

Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement
A product of
Safe Software respectfully acknowledges that we live, learn and work on the traditional and unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo First Nations.