Hi Joy! Thank you for your question, this has been filed for our developers to look into. They will be looking into when DGN files are read in FME Desktop, an attribute to inform the author of a distinction between the three type of models (Sheet, Drawing, Design) is offered or created.

Thank you Edgar,

Do you maybe have an idea if there is a workaround to asses if some features belong to a Sheet, Drawing or Design? If there is no workaround, then we just have to wait for a FME Desktop version that includes an attribute that makes distintion between those three types.

@Joy currently there is no workaround and yes work on development is ongoing with no current timeline, an internal ticket has been filed as FMEENGINE-77150.

@joy Quick update! We do have a Beta that is available on our FME Downloads page (https://engage.safe.com/support/downloads/#ga) where you can try out the change/fix in a Beta version of the software. Please beware that as a Beta version it is not recommended to use this version in production or your daily work, until it is officially released.

@edgarbaculi​ Thank you for notifying. Unfortunately, I am not in the position to download the beta version and try it out, but it's nice to know that in newer versions of FME Form it would be possible to distinguish between the different type of models. So I will be looking foward to the official newer version of FME Form.

@edgarbaculi  It's nice that there is now a variable called igds_model_type that makes distinction between Drawing, Design and Sheet possible. My colleague is happy with it.  Only one downside is that you have to read everything in and then you can do some filtering. My colleague would like to have an option that you read in for example only Design Files.

My colleague has to read in 14000 dgn files and he only needs the Design files, so it would also save time to only read the Design files instead of reading everything in and then do some filtering.

Would someting like that be possible in a future release?

@joy your colleague could benefit from using the SchemaScanner (https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-Transformers/Transformers/schemascanner.htm), it will scan either all features or a specified number of them, and can exclude certain attributes based on names, such as format-specific or internal FME attributes. Once it has read the schema, filter for just igds_model_type = Design.

@edgarbaculi I am not sure about how to go about it. 
Would you be able provide an explanation how I would be able to tackle that with the schemascanner and which other transformers I need to use?

I initially connected a Featurereader to a schemascanner, while I only read the schema in the featurereader, but I don't manage to get the igds_model_type with the schemascanner. If I read in the datafeatures, I am able to get the attribute igds_model_type, but that would defeat the purpose of winning some time, since then I can just read everything in and then do some filtering.

@joy we’re currently testing on our end, to reduce time and will update you if a solution is found.