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I have two main drafting workspaces in Microstation; Civil and Survey. Each workspace has a specific set of levels that it uses. I need to map these levels to existing feature classes in a ESRI file geodatabase. There will be many reader files, but all will use the same level names. For example, design file XX01.dgn comes in and I set up a workspace to translate level names to the appropriate feature classes. Then design file XX02.dgn comes in and want to use the same workspace to translate the levels contained in XX02.dgn (which all have the same names as the levels in XX01.dgn) without having to connect each level name to the feature classes again. The drafting workspaces contain several hundreds of levels and I've already created  test FME workspaces for Civil and Survey features to make sure all level translate correctly. Is there any way to format an FME workspace such that for any reader/design file, map these level names to these feature classes using these transformers?
Hi,

 

 

When reading the DGN dataset, the level name defined in the dataset will be stored by a format attribute called "fme_feature_type". If necessary, you can expose it in the Feature Type Properties dialog (Format Attributes tab).

 

 

If you create an external table that defines the mapping between level names and feature class names, you can map the "fme_feature_type" to a corresponding feature class name with one of these transformers.

 

- SchemaMapper (Action: Map Feature Types)

 

- Joiner

 

- FeatureMerger (and a reader that reads the table)

 

 

The SchemaMapper replaces "fme_feature_type" with the corresponding feature class name. Others adds the feature class name as a new attribute with any name you defined.

 

 

The mapping table looks like this, the format of the table can be any (csv, Excel, etc.).

 

-----

 

Source Level Name,Destination Class Name

 

41,Class1

 

42,Class2

 

43,Class3

 

... and so on.

 

 

In addition, the Dynamic Workflow might be very effective to your case. If you are not familiar with the Dynamic Workflow, this article would be a good starting point to learn that.

 

Dynamic Workflow Tutorial: Introduction (https://knowledge.safe.com/articles/Samples_and_Demos/Dynamic-Workflow-Tutorial)

 

 

Takashi
A simplest Dynamic Workflow example - FME 2015.1

 

If you don't need to perform any transforming and filtering, this data flow could do the task.

 


Thank you Takashi! I haven't had the chance the actually try setting it up yet, but I think I understand what I have to do now.

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