Method for exchanging MX Drainage data with Watercom Drains

Since we lost our 12D drainage designer ,I have tried resurrecting MX Drainage to integrate road and drainage design.  Our drainage engineer uses Watercom Drains and MX Drainage has menu options for both importing and exporting data to/from Drains.

However, the MX Drainage option uses an .mdb file, the Acesss database format now long discarded by both Watercom and Microsoft.

So to my questions:

Will Bentley update MX Drainage so that data exchange with current versions of Drains is possible?

Has anyone found a way to exchange data between MX Drainage and current versions of Drains (I know pipes can be transferred as CAD data, but have been advised pit information is lost)?

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  • I can log a feature request for MX Draiange to be updated to support the current DRAINS database file format .db1.

    As DRAINS used to support .mdb database file format it may be worthwhile contacting Watercom to check if they a method to convert a .mdb file to the new database file .db1 so it can be imported.



  • Thanks Jason, would appreciate it if you could log the feature request.

    We did contact Watercom last week as their manual indicates to use the same import process for MX Drainage as they do for a local product called Advanced Road Design (their drainage module has a common ancestor to MX Drainage, ie InfraDrainage from the days prior to Bentley's acquisition). Watercom has worked pretty closely with ARD and they now exchange data via xml. However, I will make further inquiries about their DB1 format.

    After a bit of reading, I am thinking of exporting from MX Drainage to StormCAD and then exporting a shapefile, as Drains can apparently import shapefiles. I am hoping that we can then go the opposite way back from Drains to StormCAD and through to MX Drainage. Any idea if this is feasible (ie wont be too much data loss)?
  • That workaround should be OK. With regard to data loss the best advice I can give is to use the process on a test drainage design and compare the exported drainage design.



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