London - Drawings need converting

[CatWhisperer]

Hello, a client of mine has had a load of drawings done of her products and the Mac based creator of the drawings refuses to export them to any other format even though they are her intellectual property. Relations have broken down and he is out of the frame now.

If someone can convert the .dwg format files we have (84 of them) to another 2D, graphics app friendly format that would be wonderful. I'm a 3D animator by trade and nothing I can find, not even AutoCAD's viewer or the VectorWorks viewer can open these files. The latter says they are too old to be opened.

May thanks for any help or advice.

Cat

[islandmon]

Prehaps you could post the 'Type & Creator' of those files and then we could give some advise.

[CatWhisperer]

The trouble is I went round and got the guy to move them from his Mac to a USB hard drive but I don't even know what OS version he was running. I can put a sample file up for people to play with if you want?

Cat

[CatWhisperer]

...BTW, I'm completely PC based.

Cat

[alanmac]

To be able to convert the files to another type such as you require what is needed is to know what they were orginally created with. Hence islandmon asking Type and Creator.

You won't for example open Vectoworks files in anything but VW. But once its open in VW you can export it to another format, but without the orginal file type/program you can't move on this unless its a common format like tiff or jpg.

Does it show any letters after each file name, for example vectorworks will have myhouse.mcd or mygarage.mcd just as a word document has .doc

If you can see this you can search on the net through for example the microsoft site to see what file type description this is and what opens it etc.

EDIT- read your post again - are you sure they are dwg files ?

Alan

[ 10-26-2005, 07:54 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[P Bartoli]

If the drawings where done on a Mac, I do remeber there was around an application called CadMover, I don't know if it's still around, but ?t might help...

[michael john williams]

The drawings need to be saved in

.mcd

format on the mac before they will open in a pc, then convert the older version of VW files to the VW version you want to work with and / or export in .dwg if you want to work on them in another programme.

[alanmac]

quote:

---

Originally posted by michael john williams:

The drawings need to be saved in

.mcd

format on the mac before they will open in a pc, then convert the older version of VW files to the VW version you want to work with and / or export in .dwg if you want to work on them in another programme.

---

Wrong .

A VW file will open on a mac or pc irrespective of what it was created on. File saving as a .mcd file is automatic from within VW whatever platform you run on.

You can't just save a file as .mcd and VW will open it. It has to be a VW file in the first place. You can't rename a .dxf file to .mcd and get VW to open it.

The file conversation to the latest version, as in the version of VW you are using, happens automaticaly when you open the file. (This does however only goes back so far as regards older VW file types). It creates a copy of the file, which you can then save as a current version file or export down to an older version, again a limited amount of older options is available.

What it appears is the orginal poster has files of unknown program creation, which they have dwg file copies of, but is unsuccesful at opening these and wishes to, once successful in opening them, then save them to a file format they can use in their graphics programs.

[ 10-27-2005, 07:36 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[alanmac]

quote:

---

Originally posted by CatWhisperer:

I not even AutoCAD's viewer or the VectorWorks viewer can open these files.

Cat

---

I think the problem with regard to the opening here is, and others correct me if I'm wrong, that the Viewers only open native files to view, so VW Viewer only opens VW files not dxf's, dwg's or any other file formats.

It sounds like you need to successfully import the dwg files into VW then save as VW files to use the VW Viewer okay.

But if you can get the files imported into VW you'll not need to save as VW or use the Viewer , just export out again to the format you need to do your work.

That is providing VW has that export file option.

Alan

[ 10-27-2005, 07:55 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[alanmac]

Hi

As a starting point, unless you have not already done so, try downloading and using the free dwg file viewer available here

http://www.infograph.com/products/dwgviewer/

to see if you can see the files.

Alan

[michael john williams]

Sorry I was wrong.

But I always remember saving in mcd on the mac to bring home and work on the same file on a pc

[CatWhisperer]

Thanks for all the replies! I'm pretty savvy with IT (25 years now - where did it go?)

I've put a few drawing files up on the client's website here:

http://www.chloealberry.com/pub_images/drawings/

Have a play and see what you can do. Best case would be to get them as vector based drawings into CorelDraw but if we can only get them as high resolution jpgs then thats fine.

Cat

[NickB]

Hi there Cat,

the drawing you have posted on the website are not ".dwg" drawings. They are vectorworks native format ".mcd".

So first off you should change the extension at the end of every file name from '.dwg' to '.mcd'

Because they are VectorWorks files you will need some form of VectorWorks to open them. I opened "classicBPpulllarge.mcd" without problems in VectorWorks 11. If you don't have the full version of VectorWorks you should be able to open the files in the VectorWorks viewer. But, the viewers are fussy, they don't like opening files from previous versions. So VectorWorks viewer v.11 won't open VectorWorks v.9 files for example.

You can download viewers back to v.9 from http://www.nemetschek.net/downloads/fundamentals/index.php There never was a viewer for versions before v.9

You will just have to try v.10 and v.9 (I tried version 11 and it didn't work like you said in your first post)

If it's pre version 9 you will have to find a friendly person with the full version of VectorWorks.

If it does open in viewer v.9 or v.10 then what you might be able to do is to print the file as a pdf and then open that in Illustrator.

[quigley]

What format do you need them supplied in?

[CatWhisperer]

NickB - I've had a discission with MikeM Oz who has been really helpful. He said much the same things - The guy that created the drawings is an artistic genius (works inthe film industry) but has a screw loose in the head. I don't mind supposing for a second he changed the extensions out of spite.

Thanks ever so much for the link, I'll try that now and get back to you all either way. I just need them exported as jpg if nothing else.

Once again, thanks so much!

Cat

[ 10-31-2005, 08:02 PM: Message edited by: CatWhisperer ]

[CatWhisperer]

Well, I tried the files with viewer versions 9.5.2, 10.5.1 and 11.5 but nothing will open them, even though I renamed the files to .mcd.

Can anybody convert them to jpgs for me?

Cat

[mike m oz]

They are VectorWorks 8 files. The VectorWorks Viewer will only allow you to view them. It will not allow you to modify or export them.

You need to get somebody with a licensed copy of the program to open and convert them for you.

Once they are exported as DXF or DWG files (I would recommend AC14) you will be able to import them into any program supporting these import modes.

[CatWhisperer]

There is a standard flaw with most viewer software i.e. the PC having a 'Print Screen' button that copies the screen to the clipboard that can then be pasted into any paint package.

[ErichR]

This is hugely trivial. If you want to read them, buy VW, and change the suffix, but I couldn't detect anything close to the key to the universe. But then, we're all naive, aren't we?

[mike m oz]

We have finally found a very good way to do this on a Mac.

After opening the files print using the Save PDF as Postscript option. The resulting .PS file can be opened by most graphics programs with the vector information intact.