Strange AutoCAD conversion issue.

Hi @andyew,

I don't think that there is a bug in FME. However in the Writer under Advanced Parameters, there is a setting called 'Prefer writing donuts as hatches'. I think that setting it to 'No' will solve your issue.

If that doesn't seem to work, you can also choose to create an attribute 'autocad_entity' and set it to 'autocad_polygon' for those features.

For the 'student version'-issue: are you using a template file? If so, I would guess that the template was generated with a student version.

Hope this solves your issue.

Thanks for your feedback @lars_de_vries

That's the thing, I didn't user a template. In fact I assumed FME makes user of a basic DWG prototype (these can be found in the "autocad" directory in the FME installation) as part of the conversion process.

However I did test each of the these by inserting them into a blank drawing but the warning did not arise.

So to be clear the data path is

ESRI gdb > QGIS > dxf > FME > dwg "student version drawing"

So the first element to introduce a dwg is FME. I'm just wondering with all the thousands of settings in AutoCAD whether a "bit" might be getting incorrectly set by FME and being interpreted by AutoCAD?

I've worked with 100's of CAD drawing conversions but they've been incredibly complex and never seen this issue before.

To clarify I tried this conversion as a pure read to write, no transformers and the warning didn't occur it was only after the addition of the DWGStyler that the issue arose.

Thanks again.

Hi @andyew,

I don't think we have seen this issue before. What writer are you using - AutoCAD DWG/DXF or AutoCAD RealDWG?

Normally, DWG files created by the AutoCAD DWG/DXF writer will trigger a warning that the DWG was not created with AutoCAD, since that writer uses a third-party library. The RealDWG writer avoids that warning, since it is supplied by Autodesk, but is only available for Win64.

Hi @andyew,

It has been some time since you posted your question and I would like to add a comment. Not that I have a solution, but maybe others will.

Recently I got this student version message too popping up on my screen. In my workbench I use an AutoCAD template file. I created it with CAD Map 3D 2017, and this file is standard being saved as a Release2013 file. The writers in the workbench search for the template Release2013. So far so good, no problems. The CAD file does not give problems.

In the meantime we have at the office AutoCAD 2019 installed. I made some changes in the template file, not realizing that CAD 2019 saves files automatically as a Release2018. The writers still search for the template Release2013, and here it goes wrong. Opening the CAD file results in the message student version.

You might think there are 2 options to solve it:

1. Make it backward compatible, save the template in AutoCAD as a Release2013 file. It's the easiest way, works fine indeed. Does not give troubles with the student version message.

2. Keep all up-to-date, renew the FME writers and make them search for the Release2018 template. Probably the most preferable option, but... it does not solve the problem of the student version message.

At this point I get lost. For me option 1 is good enough, but a little unsatisfying. Maybe AutoCAD 2019 has settings about 3rd party creations FME cannot cope with correctly, or FME writers need more advanced options/settings/parameters for creating AutoCAD Release2018 files. I have no idea, maybe someone has. I would like to hear about it.

Thanks, Eric