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Thread: Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

  1. #1
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    Default Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

    Hello,

    I am wondering if anybody has recently transitioned from Microstation to AutoCAD and what your experiences are. My company is currently using Microstation V8i SS3 and I am trying to find out what the impact would be to move to AutoCAD, specifically with regard to file conversion.

    The drawings we would have to convert are 2D drawings. They are drawn in Microstation's model space (no layouts involved). They contain cells, of which most are set to scale through Microstation's annotation scale. They also contain custom linetypes, text nodes, and specific dimension and text styles. The drawings don't contain any external references. The cells are organized in multiple cell libraries, which also would have to be converted.

    At this point I assume that our drawings and cells would have to be converted automatically (due to volume). I know there is a batch converter option in Microstation, but I am not sure how suitable that would be (since we not only would want convert drawing content, but also be able to use the Microstation linestyles etc. in AutoCAD, for instance). I am curious whether you used third-party tools (and which) for the conversion and where you ran into problems with your transition. Thank you very much in advance for every insight!

    raddxs

  2. #2
    Certified AUGI Addict cadtag's Avatar
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    Default Re: Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

    I'm not aware of any 3rd party tools left for that conversion process. black & Veatch _used_ to market their in-house tools, dunno if they still do.

    Best practices for converting dgn to dwg are to do an export from microstsation, acad does a pretty sub-par job of importing dgn files and getting anything that's visually good.

    DGN Linestyles are very different, both in appearance & implementation from Audoesk's, and do NOT translate well. If the appearance of the DGN lines is mission critical, then working in ACAD is..... painful.

    Cells /= blocks. Each instance of a cell in a DGN file becomes a separate BLOCK in the DWG, so a simple cell for a signpost instead of being a single BLOCK placed 42 times, becomes SIGN1, SIGN2, SIGN3..... all the way to SIGN42.

    Bottom line IMO, is that translation sucks -- probably be better off in the long run either staying with the Bentley brothers, or printing what you need to vector PDF, and using PDFImport in Acad as a basis to recreate the drawings as plain Acad dwgs without the uStn linetypes, converted cells, and generic cruft that always creeps in.

  3. #3
    Administrator BlackBox's Avatar
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    Default Re: Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

    Quote Originally Posted by cadtag View Post
    Cells /= blocks. Each instance of a cell in a DGN file becomes a separate BLOCK in the DWG, so a simple cell for a signpost instead of being a single BLOCK placed 42 times, becomes SIGN1, SIGN2, SIGN3..... all the way to SIGN42.
    This old routine will help with that, for non-attributed Blocks:

    Code:
    (vl-load-com)
    
    (defun c:RB () (c:ReplaceBlock))
    (defun c:ReplaceBlock (/ *error* blockName ss ok acDoc space ss oBlock)
    
      (defun *error* (msg)
        (if ss (vla-delete ss))
        (if acDoc
          (vla-endundomark acDoc)
        )
        (cond ((not msg))                                                   ; Normal exit
              ((member msg '("Function cancelled" "quit / exit abort")))    ; <esc> or (quit)
              ((princ (strcat "\n** Error: " msg " ** ")))                  ; Fatal error, display it
        )
        (princ)
      )
    
      (if
        (and
          (ssget "_:L" '((0 . "INSERT")))
          (or (/= ""
                  (setq blockName
                         (strcase
                           (getstring
                             T
                             (strcat "\nEnter replacement block name"
                                     (if *ReplaceBlockName*
                                       (strcat " <" *ReplaceBlockName* ">: ")
                                       ": "
                                     )
                             )
                           )
                         )
                  )
              )
              (setq blockName *ReplaceBlockName*)
          )
          (setq *ReplaceBlockName* blockName)
          (or (and (tblsearch "block" blockName) (setq ok T))
              (setq blockName (findfile (strcat blockName ".dwg")))
          )
        )
         (progn
           (vla-startundomark
             (setq acDoc (vla-get-activedocument (vlax-get-acad-object)))
           )
           (setq space (vlax-get acDoc
                                 (if (= 1 (getvar 'cvport))
                                   'paperspace
                                   'modelspace
                                 )
                       )
           )
           (vlax-for x (setq ss (vla-get-activeselectionset acDoc))
             (vla-put-layer
               (setq oBlock (vla-insertblock
                              space
                              (vla-get-insertionpoint x)
                              blockName
                              (vla-get-xscalefactor x)
                              (vla-get-yscalefactor x)
                              (vla-get-zscalefactor x)
                              (vla-get-rotation x)
                            )
               )
               (vla-get-layer x)
             )
             (vla-put-color oBlock (vla-get-color x))
             (vla-delete x)
             (if (not ok)
               (progn
                 (setq blockName (vl-filename-base blockName))
                 (setq ok T)
               )
             )
           )
         )
      )
      (*error* nil)
    )

    One you've replaced the incrementally named Blocks, you can PURGE the rest to reduce drawing bloat, etc.

    Cheers
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    Default Re: Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

    You're going to want to build your block library anyways (and layer standards, text & dimension standards, and so on) for new drawings. So if it's just a matter of access, converting drawings to DWG may be sufficient regardless of quirks like sequential block naming. If you intend on continuing on with those drawings you should budget some time to clean up.

    Since you're likely going to be making a clean break anyways, it's also a good time to review standards and make any large-scale changes that may have been put off.

  5. #5
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    Default Re: Microstation to AutoCAD transition experience

    Thank you all for your replies.

    I should probably refine my posting in terms of the type of conversion. I'll use the example of linestyles. The ideal would be to be able to open a drawing that was created in Microstation in AutoCAD and to use it just as before in Microstation, for instance to add a line in an identical linestyle.

    Since saving a .DGN drawing in .DWG format doesn't create an AC linestyle, what I am thinking of is a conversion in the way FME does it, for instance to convert GIS data to Microstation drawings:

    It reads the source data from a GIS, let's say a line object with certain attributes, and matches it (based on a pre-defined matching scheme) to a line type in the destination .DGN file. That destination linetype has to exist already, so to my knowledge FME uses a Microstation seed file that already has the linestyle defined.

    So there are two aspects:

    1) Converting MS object types (e.g. MS linestyles, dimension styles, cells) into AC object types, which basically means converting a MS seed file into an AC template file
    2) Converting the actual data in the MS source drawing files into matching data in the AC destination drawing files.

    Unless somebody knows of a tool to convert MS seed files into AC template files, Step 1) might have to be done manually, i.e. create the AC template file(s) from scratch (or at least from a converted .DGN file to obtain the layer structure).

    Then, after this is created, I wonder if there is a tool that can actually do that kind of matching for step 2), like taking a line that is drawn on linetype A in the MS drawing and draw it on linetype B in the AC drawing - i.e. take an empty AC template file that has all the object types defined already and fill it with data that is read from the MS drawing file...

    I hope I'm making sense

    I agree with dgorsman that this would be an opportunity to overhaul some cells, standards, etc. - I have quite a bucket list for that already. But I was hoping to find some options for the stuff that is good to go to AutoCAD the way it is...

    FME is probably an option (I still have to investigate this), but I was wondering if there are other tools out there (maybe tailored specifically towards CAD systems).

    This is only a 'what-if' research right now, so I'd also be interested to know whether there are any potential problems I haven't thought of and if anybody has gone through such a transition project and what their experiences were.

    Thanks again,
    raddxs

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