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Question

DWG to ESRI 10.1 File Geodatabase

  • 29 January 2013
  • 4 replies
  • 12 views

I am doing a simple convert from an AutoCAD 2011 dwg file to an ESRI 10.1 File Geodatabase.  I have an FME 2013 Workspace with the input data (DWG) linked to the output dataset (fGdb).  The Reader for CAD uses all defaults for Parameters and is generating a single merged feature type.  The Writer uses the File Geodatabase API and is set to produce Dynamic Schema. Projections are set to source (Nad27UTM15N)

 

The transformation completes without errors. I then open ArcCatalog 10.1 to view the created Geodatabase and see all features are there.  Clicking on a feature to preview it is where the problems start.  Any attempt to Identify the feature will come back with nothing found.  Any attempt to zoom in causes the graphics to disappear.  The features do not display in ArcMAp either. Teir Attribute table contains the Shape and ObjectID fields only.

 

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction to resolve this problem??

 

 

 

 

Thanks
And if you open the data in FME Universal Viewer? And if you instead of writing the data to ESRI File Geodatabase writes to an FFS and opens it in FME Universal Viewer - is it displayed correctly?

 

Try to narrow down by reading for instance only the 10 first features and see it these are displayed correctly in FFS / ESRI File Geodatabase.
Hi,

 

If you have ArcGIS, why not use the geodatabase writer instead of the API?

 

The geodatabase writer is ArcObjects based and provides more functionalities.

 

Hope this helps.
What you are describing potentially sounds like either a geometry issue with one or more features (i.e. a feature with invalid geometry) in the feature class or a spatial index problem. I suspect the former.

 

 

I don't know much about the file gdb api, but I'm guessing that this doesn't implement the kind of geometry checks that the native geodatabase writer might. In any case, you may want to use the new GeometryValidator in 2013 to validate geometries before writing to the file gdb.

 

 

An alternative is to run the "Check Geometry" tool in ArcGIS to report any geometry issues on your output feature classes and then repair them with the "Repair Geometry" tool. 

 

 

 


Thanks for the assist people.  The FSS results displayed in the viewer and adding the GeometryValidator cleared up a few issues in the DWG, I couldn't use the simple converter because some dwg layers had hyphens and we all know that databases hate hyphens.  Fortunately, I stumbled on the cause... I set the coordinate system on the input dwg file and on the output fGDB.  The features that did not behave in ArcCatalog/ArcMAP did not have a projection associated with it in the DWG.  Apparently forcing one to it in the process caused the issue.  When I took out the coordinate declarations, everything ran fine.  I just have to run the CoordinateSystemSetter on the results to finish.

 

Thanks Again.

 

-John

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