Open Mechanical Desktop DWG in AutoCAD ?

[stephen.coff]

Guys,
I have a heap of Mechanical desktop drawings I need to open and manipulate in AutoCAD. They are dwg files though they claim to open, but nothing is there ?
Can anyone assist ?

Stephen

[jaberwok]

To just view them, you want to display proxy objects (Proxyshow = 1, I think).
To manipulate them, you'll want to install the appropriate oject enabler.

[stephen.coff]

Sorry It has taken so long for me to reply.
I am thank full of the information as this was something new I hadn't encountered before. I still have a problem, I loaded the enabler which is for Mechanical Desktop 2005 to work with AutoCAD 2008. Not sure if the versions make a difference ? How ever the issue is that whilst it will open the file and all looks well. If I try insert the MDT block into a AutoCAD drawing, nothing appears. I don't wish to alter the MDT file rather insert it into other drawings as rendered blocks.

Any further assistance would be much appreciated.

Stephen

[jaberwok]

If the drawing(s) will never be used again in MDT you can Explode all the MDT objects.
Sorry, I don't know any more - hopefully someone else will.

[stephen.coff]

I need the files to stay as a 3D block, not being a 3D user my knowledge is minimal. Won't exploding the blocks loose all the data for say rendering ?


Stephen

[jaberwok]

I don't really know but I don't think that will cause a problem.

Why not make a copy of the file and try exploding everything in it?

[Jonathan Pitt]

Ok, epic thread revival time.

I am encountering a similar problem.

I find the Mechanical working drawing process/dimensioning much better than standard AutoCAD so would like to be able to create my 3D model in standard AutoCAD then use Mechanicals drawing layout and annotation features to finish off my drawings.

At the moment I have set proxyshow to 1 and installed the object enabler, but when I open up my drawing in standard AutoCAD when I look at the layout I can't see drawing views Mechanical created. It does show the annotations I have added so I am halfway there.

Is there another setting I am missing, or is this impossible to do?

Cheers

Jonathan

[jaberwok]

Ok, epic thread revival time.

I am encountering a similar problem.

I find the Mechanical working drawing process/dimensioning much better than standard AutoCAD so would like to be able to create my 3D model in standard AutoCAD then use Mechanicals drawing layout and annotation features to finish off my drawings.

At the moment I have set proxyshow to 1 and installed the object enabler, but when I open up my drawing in standard AutoCAD when I look at the layout I can't see drawing views Mechanical created. It does show the annotations I have added so I am halfway there.

Is there another setting I am missing, or is this impossible to do?

Cheers

Jonathan

Proxyshow = 1 and installed object enablers are for opening files from MDT and/or other verticals in vanilla autocad - they are irrelevant if you are using the verticals.
If you have MDT, why use vanilla acad at all?

[Jonathan Pitt]

A valid point John. I am the only user of mechanical in our office, but there are three other vanilla autocad users, if they want to open or view a drawing I have created they can't see anything.

When you say verticals, do you just mean the versions of autocad above vanilla so to speak?

I will try installing the enabler on one of the other users machine who only have vanilla and see if I can get it to work on there.

[jaberwok]

Yes, verticals are highly-modified versions of acad as published by autodesk and yes, you need to install the appropriate object enabler(s) on the other machines.