Art V Posted October 17, 2017 Share Posted October 17, 2017 (edited) Just found out it is possible to convert Microstation DGN files to dwg files using the free ODA Teigha viewer. Maybe some of you know, but if you don't and need to get a Microstation drawing into Vectorworks this might be useful. 1. Get the free Teigha viewer from ODA at https://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/teigha_viewer 2. Open the viewer and select File>New which will create an empty file 3. then use Tools>Registered Commands>TD_DgnDbModule>dgnimport to import the drawing 4. You should now have the DGN file in the viewer 5. File>Save As to save the drawing as a dwg file 6. Import the dwg file into Vectorworks Do not open the DGN file into the viewer as that way you cannot save it as a dwg file, you have to use the import route as described above. (This might change with future updates of the viewer so feel free to try at times by opening the DGN file instead of importing) This works with the Teigha viewer but not with the Teigha converter as that can only use DWG/DXF files as input for conversion and not DGN files. Edited October 17, 2017 by Art V 2 Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted October 17, 2017 Share Posted October 17, 2017 I tried that lately under macOS High Sierra and found out it crashes. Have to wait for an update. But that is a very nice service from them ! And thanks Art V for the instructions. (As I saw my old Microstation from about 2005 (?) tends to crash with its own files under Win7 or 10, on newer parallels VM) Quote Link to comment
Art V Posted October 17, 2017 Author Share Posted October 17, 2017 (edited) Did you try VirtualBox instead of Parallels? Depending on how urgently you need access and are willing to spend money on it, Ares Commander can import DGN files (it basically uses the same Teigha library as the viewer as I haven't noticed any differences in the outcome in some "test" DGN files when I found out about how to convert using the ODA Teigha Viewer. Ares Commander costs 250 euro for a subscription of one year (it's also the "engine" behind Kudo and Onshape's DWG editing as well as the basis for Draftsight and Corel CAD) . Apparently Draftsight Professional can also open DGN files and that is 99 eruo a year or a one time only purchase for a little over 250 euro but it is Windows only whereas Ares Commander also runs natively on Mac and Linux. The Teigha viewer on the other hand is free. Edited October 17, 2017 by Art V Quote Link to comment
zoomer Posted October 17, 2017 Share Posted October 17, 2017 Nothing urgent here. But I think my next paid file exchanger will be that B-ting ... Quote Link to comment
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