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Hi FME community,


From FME 2021.1 onwards the Autodesk ReCaP writer will be deprecated (https://community.safe.com/s/article/FME-Deprecations). Please vote when you currently use the Autodesk ReCaP writer and don't want it to deprecate.


Background

Engineers of our infrastructural projects use very often the Autodesk ReCap data format for viewing their point clouds in applications like Revit, AutoCAD, Autodesk ReCaP and Autodesk 3ds max. With this efficient format they can compare their designs with the current - often complex - situation. I would suspect that the whole engineering industry benefits from the efficient way of FME indexing raw point cloud data that's ready to use in BIM programs like Revit.


Several alternatives we’ve considered for our point cloud workflow:

  • Importing txt, xyz, pts files in Revit, however the indexing happens on PC’s of the engineers where they’re not equipped for.
  • Importing LAZ files into Autodesk ReCap and save the RCP/RCS files to view them in Revit, however this is an error prone manual process that we want to automate.
  • Different versions of FME paralleled to be still capable of using the ReCap writer, however this is not possible due to our use compability issues with FME Server.
  • Viewing the point clouds in Point Cloud Scene Layers, but comparison with the designs in BIM applications is more difficult.

If you use other (maybe even better) formats, please let me know. Else, vote for getting the format high on the backlog of FME's Product Managers.


Illustration in ReCap of Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands (source: open elevation dataset AHN3)


Kind regards,


Jan Droesen

FME specialist

Movares Netherlands

Does anybody know the reason this file format is deprecated?

@Chris Warren​, the answer on this question from Safe Software was: "because it was found that tthe ReCaP format] was notably underused in FME and in the industry according to our data, and that the third party libraries that we depended on lacked updates for this format. In many cases that we noticed, alternative formats existed depending on the use case" and "a concern over security". Is this still the case @jovitaatsafe​ ? Is 15 voters enough reason to reconsider the deprecation?

Hi @geojanmov​,

I'm glad to report that we have a re-write of the Recap Writer planned but not yet scheduled, tracked internally as (FMEENGINE-57471). We'll be back to update here when it has been addressed.

 

In the meantime, the writer will still work but you just can't add a new writer in the newer builds of FME where the writer has been deprecated. If you have an existing writer in the workspace, you can still run it successfully in newer builds. The format is essentially just hidden in newer builds.

 

As a potential workaround, you can expose it in the meantime until the new format is released by going into the formats.db in your install folder, for example: C:Program FilesFME<version_build>formats.db, and change the visibility to YES so it looks like this: RECAP|Autodesk ReCap (deprecated)|DIRONLY|OUTPUT|OUTPUT|YES|ReCap Project Files(*.rcp)%*.rcp%All Files(*)%*|POINTCLOUD|NO|NO|YES|YES||||NO|Autodesk ReCap. It's the fourth Y/N value.

Hello jovitaatsafe, do you have any information about the release?

Thanks

Hi @lado41​, thanks for reaching out! Unfortunately I don't have any updates on this yet.

 

For now, please continue to use the current ReCap Writer. Existing workspaces with the writer will continue to work in newer builds, with a workaround above for exposing the format to add a new writer.

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