Importing DWG

[Bruce Pittard]

When importing DWG files which contain XREF's, it would be great if VW could import the XREF's also at the correct location.

It would also be nice if the Pen Sizes fonts etc could also be recognized from the Plot Styles table etc which can be kept in an individual VW folder as they are recieved by regular clients. In short, the DWG is opened close to perfect as the original.

[Delmer]

It would also be nice if a dwg could open a dwg and recognize the individual's pen settings. Not that I don't agree with you, just wondering how long till the AutoCAD world gets over the custom colored pen thing.

[jan15]

A DWG file doesn't have any pen settings. It just has colors. The pen settings are in a "Plot Style Table" file, with a .CTB extension, which assigns a lineweight and a bunch of other print-out properties to each of the 255 colors. The CTB file is usually set up by a CAD administrator, and most Autocad users don't even know it exists, so they never send it along with the DWG file and you usually have to go over their heads to get a copy of it. It's a problem for other Autocad users, too.

The Xref file issue is only a little better. They know about the xref's, but usually don't think to send them. And even if they do, they're usually not relatively referenced, so even Autocad can't find the xref's since your computer doesn't have the same directory structure as theirs. The only hope is to get them to bind the xref's, which again is like pulling teeth since the Autocad user probably doesn't know what that means and probably just gets testy when confronted with anything new.

[ 04-27-2005, 06:47 PM: Message edited by: jan15 ]

[Bruce Pittard]

We have most of our clients CTB plot style files which we store on the only PC in my department for running autocad. When we recieve drawings I need to go to that machine to print them off. What i'm saying is i'd like VW to be able to import them accurately so I don't have to jump on to autocad.