CAD file opened in Visio...

[AgeXVII]

thread555-188053

I tried to look up a similar thread but no luck and not sure if anyone has had this problem or not.

At my office we (myself and the only other engineer) use Microsoft Visio to do any drawings or schematics, mainly because he has been here for 8 + years and that is what he knows how to use and likes. He sent off some drawings to get reviewed and stamped by another engineering company and they sent back the drawings made and edited in AutoCad. First problem was we could not open the files. They all said corrupt or extension was incorrect so I had that guy save them as CAD 2000 dwgs and dxf files and they opened just fine.

Next problem was my coworker needed to edit the drawings some more before he submitted them again. When I right click the drawings and then Convert on 2 or 3 of the 5 drawings some items just disappear. Why? Before converting the drawing they are all grouped together so we cannot edit it but after I click convert so Visio can see separate components the screen loads then the drawing flashes to a white slate really quickly and then (on the specific drawing we are trying to change) the top half goes away.

I have attached the original drawing and the result after converting hopefully someone can tell me a fix? I have AutoCad on my computer at home so I was going to try to load the drawings on there and see if they can be saved not as a group or converted on there first possibly but if anyone knows a fix from the Visio side it would be helpful to know!
Before

After

 

[MikeHalloran]

If you're going to exchange drawings with other engineers, you probably should have an AutoCAD seat in house so you can edit AutoCAD files _in_ AutoCAD.

Conversion back and forth between formats always loses something. Worse, you may not notice right away.

If AutoCAD is too pricey for you right now, take a look at Dassault Draftsight.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[AgeXVII]

I am still fairly new at this company and was just asked to "make it work" because at first they couldn't open the drawings at all. I would consider AutoCAD and like to get more experience using it other than the slight tinkering I have done on my own to play around with it but the company I work for is an electrical contracting company. We have myself and 1 other EE who is also a master electrician then a handful of Project Managers (including the owners) who have no engineering background and a group of electricians. The only use of AutoCAD would be from the 2 of us and the other guy is set on Visio since he has been using it for 8+ years. I don't think moving to CAD is really an option, at least not right now.

Side note - I tried a number of different things on the CAD side to make it work in converting in Visio but the other group had made part of the drawing using a MetaCAD file so that is where the problem was. I finally decided enough time was wasted trying to fix it and decided to just use Visio tools and trace the objects that were going away.