Why does it seem that notes are the most volatile dim type when dealing with DWG? Translations are a complete gamble and DWG mode will produce the weirdest stuff. We have a project that the users didn't start out with a good style and have created notes that the inline leader will disappear every time the drawing is entered. Anyone else have this issue?
Thanks,
Mike
Directly using an ACAD dimstyle is a valid way to produce DWG compatible dimensions/leaders. Another way is to create it while in DWG workmode which was designed for the very purpose of creating DWG compatible elements.
Take inline leader as an example: MicroStation allows you to specify the inline leader length you want, but ACAD does not. In ACAD, the inline leader length of a LEADER entity has a fixed value - same size as its arrowhead length. You cannot set any size other than arrowhead size. In addition to that, ACAD requires your leader entity to be attached to an object(i.e. a text in this case); otherwise it does not display the inline leader at all. This is where the toggle in DWG Save As, "Always Create an In-Line Leader for Notes" comes to rescue - when toggled on, it forces the inline leader to be present regardless whether or not your leader dimension is attached to a text element. However, there is a price for using this toggle - when you audit the DWG file in ACAD, you'd be alerted that these leaders are not attached to texts. This is OK because there is no functional problem, but it is annoying nevertheless. If you have started your project in DWG workmode, in which case you would not have been able to create a dimension style with an inline leader length not supported by DWG, hence you would not have ended up with a DWG file that has unexpected inline leader size. I'm not saying inline leader length is the cause of your specific problem as I have not seen your file, but I hope that this information may help you to identify the true cause of the problem(s) and perhaps come up with a valid solution. If you need further help feel free to post a simple DGN file so we can take a look.
Mike,
I have not seen that one but plenty of others, all my curved leaders change to strait lines. What you said is pretty key in that they didn't start off with a good style. I now build all my styles (line, text, dim) in ACAD and bring them into MS to reduce these translation issues.
Regards,
DavidG