Project wise connector not downloading files with dependencies

It’s a fairly new transformer so it might be that it’s not supported at the moment? How can you see that a file has dependencies? Or how do you make a file with dependency, do you have an example? I can try to recreate it on my PW

There is a dependency viewer tab on project wise. I will try to get a screen later. But basically if you have a reference file on the microstation or Autocad files, you won’t be able to list it or download it.

We are having the same problem too.

Like you said if you see this icon in ProjectWise it basically means the Microstation file is referencing something. When you try select the Object ID to download these types of files using the ProjectWise WSG Connector you can't because they will not show up in the selection list. However once go into the Microstation file, in ProjectWise and detached all reference files you can return to FME and hit the refresh icon then the file will appear at the bottom of the list.

This is a problem because 100% of the files we want to work with are referencing other files. If anyone has ideas on how to fix this it would be awesome!

Hi @gerry and @iowadotuser,

It looks like this issue has been identified in our tracking system (FMEENGINE-61468) and development is already in progress on the ProjectWiseConnector for accessing referenced files. We will let you know as soon as it's resolved and ready for use!

That's great @jovitaatsafe we are working on a rather advantageous project and this function is something we have been waiting for to get the process up and running. Thank you for getting the information back to us so fast.

Just wanted to clarify the issue we are having. You said "ProjectWise Connector for accessing referenced files". Did you mean accessing Microstation files that have a reference attached to them. Currently if you have a Microstation file with an attached reference it does not show up once you remove the attachment it shows up again.

Also do you have any idea on the approx. timeline to fix the issue.

Hi @iowadotuser,

No problem! Yes, that is correct, the issue is for being able to access DGN files that have a reference attached to them. And we've noted the same current behavior that the DGN files with attached references don't show up using the ProjectWiseWSGConnector (aka the ProjectWiseConnector).

The expected timeline is early October, possibly in the next week or so. I or another expert will be back to inform you when the fix has been implemented.

For anyone still waiting for an update, you should now be able to access DGN files that have a reference attached to them. You can find this functionality in FME 2019.2 and newer from our downloads page. Let us know if you have any questions or encounter any issues, and I can follow up with our development team on it.

hi @jovitaatsafe,

I just tested the functionality in FME 2019.2 and unfortunately cannot confirm it works for DWG files with external references. The ProjectwiseWise Connector will now allow to list files with references (Logical Sets in PW terminology) via the ProjectWise Source browser but when attempting to download it will:

a) only download the parent DWG when set on "Download as File"

b) result in an error when set on "Download as Folder"

No luck with the same process while using Feature Reader with PW as the data source. The reader will read schemas of all the external references but not the data.

I have previously tried to download a DWG with external references from PW using HTTP Caller but it seemed that this is a limitation of the PW API. Hopefully Safe is able to address this in the future.

Hi @janrykr,

Sorry for the late reply! I did a bit of digging into the issue and it looks like what you've experienced is expected behaviour. At this time we're not able to download the dependencies automatically by selecting the parent file for download. By attempting to download the parent as a folder, it is expected for FME to reject that feature.

Instead, try listing the dependent files first, then have another ProjectWiseWSGConnector to download those specific individual files. It's definitely worth posting a new idea with your use case if you'd like to see this functionality added.

Hi @jovitaatsafe

• The location of the dependencies has to be known otherwise the workflow will not know where to look for them. In my user case, all Master files and external references are within the same PW folder which makes it easy but there could be scenarios when they are elsewhere.
• The downloaded Master file contains insertion points for the external references with file names attached so in theory they could be linked and downloaded separately. It won't however keep links to deeper level dependencies ( external reference within a external reference).

I will post the idea.

Many thanks