FME Form

Hi All,I’m exploring whether FME could help automate a manual process for extracting pipe diameter information from rasterised PDF drawings.The PDFs also need be georeferenced, although the raster quality is relatively poor. The aim is to extract pipe diameter annotations using OCR, create point locations from the recognised text, and then spatially associate these with the corresponding GIS pipe lines to populate the diameter attribute.I’ve tried TesseractCaller, but the results have not been sufficiently reliable so far.Has anyone successfully implemented something similar in FME? I’d be particularly interested in recommendations for OCR libraries, Python libraries, FME packages, or other approaches that perform well with low-quality engineering drawings.Below of an example of the pdf Thanks :)

If I understand correctly, since the latest update, FME can include multiple geometry columns from an Oracle table in the workflow without much hassle.Previously, it was necessary to manually set "Handle Multiple Spatial Columns" to Yes in the reader settings (if I remember correctly). Now, it seems that this option is set to Yes by default for readers, as my version of FME now loads all geometry columns without me having to configure anything. I also can't seem to find the option to enable or disable this anymore.This is actually quite useful, but in my case, all geometry columns under User Attributes → Geometry Definition are greyed out, so I have no way to specify that I don't want to include all geometry columns.When I try to specify which geometry column I want to use under Parameters → Spatial Column, I get the following error:|ERROR |Error running translation: ORACLE Reader: 'Spatial Column' and 'Handle Multiple Spatial Columns' cannot be specified togetherAm I just missing some

In my daily work I’m working with multiple versions of Workbench. I usually install and update every major release on my PC under “Program Files/FME yyyy”, where YYYY is the release year. Occasionally I install multiple major release versions if the need arrives, using the path “Program Files/FME YYYY.X.Y”.As opening workspaces with the wrong version of FME is problematic for several reasons, I’ve created and been using a small console application to read the top 20 lines of the selected FMW file, extracting the path to the version of FME that created the workspace, and firing up the correct Workbench if possible. However, even if this minimizes the problem of using wrong versions of Workbench quite a bit, this still has a drawback. I can only see what FME version a workspace needs by opening it either in Workbench or a text editor.But now I’ve utilized Claude AI to build me a small C++ extension to Windows Explorer that displays the folder name (of fme.exe in the embedded path, i.e. t

Hello, I am trying to figure out how to use the HTTPCaller Transformer to GET records from our Accela Permitting Platform. It is hosted on Azure. Accela has an API named Accela Construct API. I have been trying to configure the HTTPCaller with the instructions from their API with no luck. Has anyone tried to use the HTTPCaller to obtain permit records from Accela? could you share a screenshot of your HTTPCaller parameters? so I can get an idea on what I am doing wrong?

Hi everyone,I currently use FME Form 2026.2 in various large customer projects (bulk coordinate/geometry updates of GIS databases with public/municipal infrastructure), where it is critical that data quality is not degraded when processing data with FME.I read through the release notes for FME Form 2026.3 and saw that the following bug has been added to the backlog:VertexCreator: Point Inserted Into Incorrect Index [26550]If I'm interpreting this correctly, this is an existing bug in VertexCreator that has been present in earlier FME versions and was only added to the known issues list with 2026.3 - ?Due to the potentially catastrophic consequences this could have on the data quality for my customers, we would like to get more clarifications about:How the problem is triggered and if it is data-specific (maybe a particular format?) How can I detect whether this bug is affecting my conversion workflows? What workarounds are available?  Is this bug new and introduced in 2026.3? Which othe

If possible, it would be great if there was a ‘Success’ output port on Writers (I don’t mean FeatureWriters), so that you can use that to initiate subsequent processes.  I often need to control the order that processes need to run between different datasets.I tried using FeatureWriters and FeatureReaders, using the ‘Summary’ and ‘Initiator’ ports, which works fine in Workbench, but there’s apparently a bug in Flow when outputting to an ArcGISFeatureService.

Hello,I am currently working with OpenCities Map 2025 and processing geometry as well as attribute information in FME. The Documentation of the Bentley Map XFM Design (V8) Reader states that XFM data exists and that the newer version uses XAttributes associated with Bentley Select Series 3 and newer design files. It also states that “the DGN V8 Writer currently only writes XFM data in the Select Series 1 form”.My experience so far is that I can write a DGN file and and OpenCities Map can show without problems the geometry, but the attribute information gets distorted. What I mean by that: in native DGN files the properties display that an element is indeed a native feature, but the in FME created DGN file shows the elements are inferred features containing associated elements. Further in the FME created DGN file it’s possible to create a Map Model but when using the Browse Tool it displays the exception window: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.This lead to inspectin

Hello,with the upgrade to version 2026.1.2.0 I have run into a strange behaviour when using Excel writers.FME Workbench simply says at the end:FME was unable to finish the workspace translation due to an unexpected termination. Any data caches will be cleared because their data integrity is compromised.This is currently not much to work with. For pinpointing the cause, I deactivated all excel-writers in my workbench and it just ran fine.Has anybode experienced this with Version 2026.1.2.0?Kind regards,Ryoung 

Hi. We're looking for some clarification on the virtual memory values being reported by FME Form and whether they are expected. On a Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Windows System Information shows:Disk: 128.00 GB Drive C: Total: 126.45 GB Drive C: Free: 36.37 GB Physical RAM: 64 GB Page File: 9.5 GB Virtual Memory: 73.5 GBHowever, FME Form 2026.2.1 reports the following in the logs:System Status: 36.38 GB of disk space available in the FME temporary folder (C:\Users\LOCAL_…...\Temp) System Status: 63.99 GB of physical memory available System Status: 255.98 GB of virtual memory availableThe physical memory figure appears reasonable, but the virtual memory figure is considerably higher than the virtual memory reported by Windows.Our concern is whether this is simply a difference in terminology or metrics, or whether FME is using a different definition of "virtual memory" than Windows System Information. If FME genuinely believes more memory is available than can actually be committed by th

Hi, I am migrating an FME Flow Azure AD web service from FME Form 2025.0.1 to 2026.3.0.0 (Build 26589). The upgrade to FME 2026 introduced the redirect strategy, due to removal of embedded browser, which was working previously, so I know the details I’ve used should work. Error:I’m using no secret. I’ve tested using both Loopback Interface Redirect and Proxy Redirect, same result on both. Everything has been set up following instructions outlined in: https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/39450156608781-External-Browser-Authentication-in-FME-Form  I’ve set up everything as instructed in azure too. I’m stumped by this issue. Not sure how to even begin to debug it. FME form has no logs for me to assess. Azure has only basic logs which offer no answers.|Can anyone give me some ideas on what I can try and check to resolve this? Is using tinker the only way forward? Happy to share the full web service config if useful.Thanks

Hello,I have a task to evaluate whether it is possible to create an IMDF dataset from DWG files using FME.There is a good tutorial from Safe Software (Converting CAD Datasets to IMDF: Part 1 – FME Support Center) that uses a master drawing file with Xrefs. However, in my case I only have separate DWG files for each floor, so I cannot replicate the tutorial in exactly the same way.At the moment, I do not have access to AutoCAD and I am not a CAD expert. I have read that properly converting DWG data into the IMDF format can be quite challenging. Does anyone have experience with or examples of an FME workflow that does not use Xrefs, but instead uses separate DWG files for each floor? Or do you think that creating a valid IMDF dataset from this kind of source data is not feasible without further preparation of the DWG files?Thanks in advance!

I’ve been having issues with my computer crashing that are unrelated to FME. But after the latest instance, which happened while i had my workspace open, I am now unable to open the most recent save to get to the recovery file. I’ve tried from the Form start window; I click and nothing happens. I’ve also tried accessing it from windows explorer but it opens straight to the start window again rather than opening the workspace. Has anyone ever had this happen before? I found a suggestion in a previous community thread to copy the workspace and its recovery file into a different file path, but that didn’t work for me. I’ve also verified that it seems to only be happening with this specific workbench, others are still working fine.Am I doomed to have to recreate it!? 

I’m using StringPairReplacer to replace some tags (inside $ chars) in a snippet code to their default value, which fails.Since SPR doesn’t accept (dynamic) variables for replacement string, only parameters, I’ve enclosed it in a custom transformer, and using its parameters to transfer the value of the replacement string.But it still fails with“@Tcl2 -- failed to evaluate expression `Replace_replacement_tags_StringPairReplacer_2_fb7401f4_4759_4fdf_9add_13b9915a14686_replace' -- char map list unbalanced”The replacement value is given below in blue, and it works if I insert it as a fixed string.$schema$ dbo $table_name$ table_name $column_name$ column_name $data_type$ VARCHAR(20) $null$ NULL $collate$ Latin1_General_CI_AS $default$ NULLAm I fighting some TCL or FME escaping, or could it be a bug in SPR ?Fails in both 2020 and 2026.Cheers.

I am using FME 2022. When I tried to publish data to ArcGIS Porta, I had the error message as below: ArcGIS Portal Feature Service Writer: Encountered an unexpected error. The error code from the server was '409' and the message was: 'Item 'tmps4rtbkh5.zip' already exists.'. Details: '' Translation Failed.I checked my portal site and found FGDB named 'tmps4rtbkh5.zip' has been published but the feature service hasn't been created, but I can download 'tmps4rtbkh5.zip' file to my local drive. Seems FME already publish the data into portal but failed to generate the feature service from the data. Does anyone have any ideas about this?I used FME2019 to publish data to ArcGIS Portal, never had this problem before.Thanks 

Hi,I’m using FME Workbench (2025.1.3.3) to transfer data between different databases.The workflow is as follows:Creator → FeatureReader → DatabaseQuerier → FeatureWriterThe FeatureReader reads one feature from the source database to initialize the process. The DatabaseQuerier then executes a query against the source PostgreSQL database and returns the actual data to be written. The schema attributes are passed through the workflow, and the FeatureWriter writes the resulting features to an existing table in the destination PostgreSQL database.The problem occurs when one of the source columns has the PostgreSQL bytea data type.The source and destination tables have the following relevant column:geom byteaWhen both the source and destination databases are PostgreSQL, FME does not appear to transfer this binary attribute correctly.With Bulk Insert enabled, the FeatureWriter fails with the following PostgreSQL error:ERROR: missing data for column "geom"The log also reports:Bulk copy failed

Microsoft Azure SQL Database (JDBC MSSQL) User Attributes has a varchar(max)Microsoft Azure Synapse SQL (Data Warehouse) does not!I need to write WKT and GeoJson to my Fabric data warehouse and I think I need to use the Microsoft Azure Synapse SQL (Data Warehouse) writer to do that.  Data type varchar(8000) may not be sufficiently long for a line or a polygon for WKT or GeoJson.Is there something I am missing?  Is a varchar(max) on the roadmap for Microsoft Azure Synapse SQL (Data Warehouse)?I am using Form 2026.2.

My company does SSL inspection/interception which is causing errors when trying to view background maps in FME Form.  I have seen ways to fix this for the FME Flow (Server) side, but is there any way to change any configurations for FME Form to handle this?  The CA certificate for our authority is in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities certificate store on machines so I’m not sure why it isn’t trusted if FME is using the machine’s certificate store for trust.  Below is an example of error seeing from FME Flow 2025.0.1 (but have seen on previous versions as well).Stadia Maps Reader: Failed to load 'https://tiles.stadiamaps.com/tiles/alidade_smooth/5/19/14.png'. Error: 'HTTPSConnectionPool(host='tiles.stadiamaps.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /tiles/alidade_smooth/5/19/14.png (Caused by SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: Missing Authority Key Identifier (_ssl.c:1018)')))'Python Exception <FMEExcepti

Have a WKT csv, with lines like these two: MULTIPOLYGON (((3.751446328848148 51.09789238333794,3.7514744771186774 51.09785395106413,3.7515454118479563 51.09787454834335)),((3.7486227439488014 51.10188366613414,3.7471867226749627 51.101468672794745,3.745208081250554 51.1041693453312)));2003001POLYGON ((3.743757864908372 51.08620899834685,3.744266505912946 51.0833952986076,3.7433015994552856 51.08332946064444));2003002However, the receiving software can only handle multipolygons. So in the second line, I need to replace “POLYGON” bij “MULTIPOLYGON” (which is easy), but also the two opening round brackets “((“ need to be replaced by three opening round brackets “(((“ and the same for the closing brackets.I don’t seem to find a way of escaping the brackets. Even in regex expressions FME interprets the brackets as real brackets and not characters to look for.Can anyone help here? 

Esri ArcGIS Connector package 3.22.0I want to update a single attribute on an existing feature layer using the newer ArcGIS Feature Writer. ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3. I am passing the writer the primary key for the row and the attribute I want to update. This is how I used to do it in the old feature service writer. But now I get a warning that it’s skipping the feature (actually all of them) because a different attribute in the featureclass is set to nonnullable and the value is null, missing, or empty. In this case, it’s missing. For example, I wanted to update an attribute on a utility network featureclass and got a warning that the feature update would be skipped because the associationstatus field is nonnullable. But that is a UN maintained field.Also, does this mean if I don’t pass an attribute that already exists into the writer it will null it out if it is nullable? It seems like this means I need to read the features in and pass all the existing attributes even if I know which ro

Hi.  I’ve created a workbench that reads information from a PDF file, processes that content, then writes it to a database.  This works as expected, either when run locally or from within FME Flow.  However, it only processes one file at a time.  So, to rectify this as a local process, I have created a separate workbench that uses a ‘Directory and File Pathnames’ reader to read PDF files from a named folder, then passes these individually to the original PDF-processing workbench (via a WorkspaceRunner).  This, too, works as expected.  However, being local, it’s slow.So, it would be good to replicate this, so that it instead makes its requests to FME Flow, via an FMEFlowJobSubmitter.  And...this is where I get stuck, as it requires each PDF file to be uploaded to that server, in sequence.  Looking at the documentation, it seems that an HTTPCaller is the preferred way to achieve this, but I’m not sure that I understand how this needs to work in practice.  So, has anyone done anything sim

I have a workspace using a ChangeDetector to maintain data in a SharePoint Online list, using a Microsoft SharePoint Server List writer (we are blocked from using the Graph API, so the Microsoft SharePoint Online List reader/writer are not options for us).When a value has been written to a field in the list but is later removed in the source/revised data, the ChangeDetector recognizes this and sends either a null or blank/empty value to the writer, without error. But, the null/empty/blank value is not actually written or accepted, and the stale value persists.I’ve found that if I use a NullAttributeMapper and map Empty, Missing, and Null values to a New Value and set that to a single space character, that SharePoint actually writes the null/blank value over the existing value. For anyone trying to do the same, this might be an important point.The issue that I’ve run into is that Date/DateTime-type fields will not accept a space as input. I’ve tried writing in 00000000 and it is also re

Hi All,I’d like to replace our process of creating services in Esri portal.Instead of adding data from our SDE database to an aprx and publishing it as a feature service. I’d instead like to publish the data as a feature service directly from FME.I can do this using the Esri ArcGIS connector but it creates a hosted feature layer instead of referencing the data in the SDE database.Is it possible to write a feature layer that references the SDE database instead of a hosted feature layer?I’m using FME 2024.0.3.0 but have updated the Esri ArcGIS connector to the latest version.TIA

Hi FME Folks,I’m working with a georeferenced PDF that contains several annotations/marked-up text. I also have an existing point shapefile/point feature class.My requirement is to:Read the georeferenced PDF in FME. Extract the annotation text. Get the location/coordinates of each annotation. Transfer the extracted annotation text to the corresponding point feature in the shapefile. Write the annotation text into an attribute field of the point feature class.Has anyone implemented a similar workflow in FME?I would appreciate any suggestions on the appropriate FME reader/transformers or the best approach to extract both the annotation text and its spatial location from a georeferenced PDF.Thanks in advance for your suggestions!Anand 

I have been using FME2026.2 -26333 - for all my current projects which includes analysing larger datasets (2-5mil records).  These aren't really that large.I have found when building the analysis with data cached FME can be highly unresponsive and lag when trying to modify the existing transformation.  Adding a new transformer, modify an existing transformer, even moving objects on the canvas.  The system will lag and can often crash.My laptop is the highest spec our company supports - Dell Precision 7680, 1Tb HD, 6gb GPU, 32gb RAM.  Even clicking too quickly after the transformation is run for that transformer can crash FME.   Surely I’m not the only person with this issue?  Stability in this version seems unbelievably poor which makes me wonder if this is known or overcome somehow.

I’m trying to figure out how to add new attribute and calculate a specific value.I have a Survey123 survey that submits records to ArcGIS Online. Each survey contains one location, and one or more inspections (this is an example). In ArcGIS, this is stored in two tables with a one-to-many relationship. Each location has a field with a unique ID and each inspection has a field with the inspection number literally 1, 2, 3, and so on. Records in the two tables look like this.Locations table Location A. Location B. Location C. Location D.  Inspections table A. Inspection 1. B. Inspection 1.  B. Inspection 2.  C. Inspection 1. C. Inspection 2. C. Inspection 3. D. Inspection 1.  In FME Form, I join the tables so the records look like this. Location A. Inspection 1. Location B. Inspection 1.  Location B. Inspection 2.  Location C. Inspection 1. Location C. Inspection 2. Location C.