Map Power View: Cannot open dwg file

Hello,

I have dwg files which I cannot open in Map PowerView V8i SS 3.

The error message is (german)"[Dateiname] liegt in unbekanntem Dateiformat vor" (engl. "unknown file format")

The weird thing is that  I am able to open these files on the same machine using Microstation V8i SS2.

Might this be a REALdwg version conflict issue? But how can I identify and solve it?

Any help would be appreciated

Stefan

Parents
  • Hello Stefan,

    You are right, that is weird. As you could expect, if the DWG file open in MicroStation V8i SS2 (older), it should open in PowerView Ss3 (more recent). Even if the RealDWG version is different, it should be able to read older version file. Or convert it somewhere.

    if you provide the file, or a sample of the file, maybe someone on this forum will be able to reproduce the issue and provide a solution or workaround. Since I cannot explain, maybe you should re-install PowerView (or try to "Run as Admin"). The described behavior here still odd and inexplicable.

    Sorry to not provide any solution and to shoot everywhere.

    Sebastien Lefrancois [Bentley]


    This is a test

  • Hello Sebastien

    Thank you for your hint. Unfortunaltely running "as Administrator" didn't help - I got the same error message.

    I have several Map PowerView installations that share the same problem, it is not just on my machine. The currently installed Version is 08.11.09.110.

    I am happy to provide a very simple sample file below...

    Stefan

    mpv_test_20170307.dwg

  • I solved the problem by opening the .dwg file using a current version of Bentley Map (or MicroStation), saving the file as .dgn, then opening it with Map PowerView V8i 9(SELECTseries 3). From there I saved the file back to .dwg format.

    Looking at the Levels, one name starts with an underbar ( _ ). And doing a File Compress, it reported a problem with the DEFPOINTS level. Don't know if those are the cause of the problem or not.

    Recommendation:
    1. Open the file with MicroStation
    2. Save as... DGN File Format
    3. Work with the file
    4. Save as... DWG File Format



  • Dan

    Thank you for your input. This seems to be a valid path if you are in a developer environment having installed Microstation and Map PowerView simultaneously as I (and you) have.

    In my field I have users just using Map PowerView only. For these it is very annoying if they get a .dgn .dwg file which they cannot open. They have to send it to a colleague who is running Microstation and ask him to convert it and send it back.

    As I understand both Map PowerView and Microstation use the REALdwg libraries from Autodesk to convert to/from dwg/dxf. So I wonder if there are different versions of the libraries used. Is there a way to find out in the settings of each of these two applications?

    Best regards,
    Stefan

  • You can type in: "Version" in the Key-in Browser to see the PowerPlatform version and RealDWG date that was compiled with Bentley Map PowerView V8i.

    Here is the result for Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 3) 08.11.09.107:

    Here is the result for Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 4) 08.11.09.763:

    Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 4) 08.11.09.763 opened your test file without incident.



Reply
  • You can type in: "Version" in the Key-in Browser to see the PowerPlatform version and RealDWG date that was compiled with Bentley Map PowerView V8i.

    Here is the result for Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 3) 08.11.09.107:

    Here is the result for Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 4) 08.11.09.763:

    Bentley Map PowerView V8i (SELECTseries 4) 08.11.09.763 opened your test file without incident.



Children
  • Dan,

    This now makes completely sense!

    Using your "version" key-in it produces:

    With Microstation:

    So it looks like because Microstation is running with a newer version of RealDWG (v2010), it is able to read the file. Map PowerView with RealDWG 2009 is not capable of reading it.

    To verify my thesis I followed the instructions in this Bentley article and set the MS_REALDWG_VERSION variable to 2009 in Microstation. This ended up in the same error as with Map PowerView before. Microstation now was not able to read the .dwg file anymore!

    Unfortunately this does not work the other way round (setting the variable to 2010 in Map PowerView). So I guess these libraries are not shared between the products (you used the wording "compiled with" earlier, what suggests that the RealDWG library is tightly linked to the Bentley product...)

    I wonder though whether RealDWG may be updated seperately? I will give it a try with the update links in the aforementioned article. An update to Map PowerView SS4 is not an option because of dependencies with installed GIS system.

    Thanks for your support

    Stefan

  • Just to end this thread: Updating to the newest RealDWG version found in the Bentley Software Fullfillment Center (in my case it was Bentley V8i SS3 Autodesk RealDWG 2014) and setting the variable MS_REALDWG_VERSION to the value "2014" activated the newest RealDWG version in Map PowerView. This way I was able to read the file.

    Cheers

    Stefan

    Answer Verified By: she