Opening difficult .dwg files with Affinity Designer V2

[julwest78]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking to replace Autocad for processing .dwg files and I only do 2D.
I only work on stand layout plans for events.

I've got a Mac M1 and I'm on Ventura.

I am unable to open a .dwg file with Affinity Designer V2 and it gives me the plan as it appears in Autocad.
I also get an error message when opening the file.
I enclose a screenshot of my working window and the .dwg file.

Thank you for your help.

PARC_ILE_MONSIEUR_2018__3D.dwg Capture d’écran 2023-09-10 à 21.57.23.pdf Capture d’écran 2023-09-10 à 21.57.43.pdf

[Callum]

Hi Julwest78,

This is likely due to the proxy objects mentioned in the first error message. When you open your .DWG file in Autocad are you warned about the proxy objects? Does deleting them make this file open correctly in Affinity?

Thanks
C

[julwest78]

Hello and thank you Callum,

When I open my file, I don't get a message telling me that proxy objects are present.
I've tried to remove them from the file but I can't find any.

[Tim France]

Hi @julwest78,

I've taken a look at your file. There is a proxy entity in it, which designer warns you about when it opens the file, but I don't think they are the cause of your problems.

If you choose "Single Page" on import and select the only paperspace layout available (called "Presentation1") you get a blank document. This is correct behaviour and AutoCAD does the same thing:

If you choose "Model" on import, Designer imports the document but has had to zoom out by such a huge amount, you can't see anything. That's because Designer thinks some of the entities in the model are a huge distance from the rest of them and to display all of them, it zooms out. If you do a Select All (Cmd+A or Ctrl+A), you will see a bounding box around all of the entities and that box is massive. If you zoom in on the corner of the box that's on the spread and enable Hairline View mode (View -> View Mode -> Hairline), you will see your entities appear:

You could select just these entities and paste them into a new document, then scale / rotate them as a work around.  I will see if there's a legitimate reason why Designer thinks there are these huge entities in your document (like in Layer ERLBT00L_ElectriciteBT).

Regards,

Tim

[julwest78]

Thank you very much for your expertise. It will save me a lot of time. Now I just need to set up a way of working that's as efficient as Autocad. Thank you so much.

[Tim France]

@julwest78

I have good news and some not-so-good news. The good news is I've found the reason for the bad import and have put a fix into Designer. Now your file will open normally and look like this:

The not-so-good news is it is highly unlikely I'll be able to get the fix into v2.2 as we're quite far through the beta cycle, so unfortunately this will probably have to wait till v2.3.

Regards,
Tim

[Patrick Connor]

2 hours ago, Tim France said:

I'll be able to get the fix into v2.2 as we're quite far through the beta cycle, so unfortunately this will probably have to wait till v2.3.

and I should think the 2.3 beta would start a few weeks after 2.2 release has settled. So once 2.3 beta is available you can try this fix for yourself, if you don't mind installing the parallel 2.3 beta alongside to your 2.2 release

[julwest78]

Hello,
I've just installed version 2.3 of Affinity Designer Beta.
The problem hasn't been solved and I still get the attached error message.
Perhaps I should wait for the official 2.3 version before testing my file again.
Thanks to all.

Capture d’écran 2023-10-26 à 15.38.17.pdf Capture d’écran 2023-10-26 à 15.48.39.pdf

[Affinityconfusesme]

HI @julwest78 you will know that this issue is resolved when you get a @Serif Info Bot

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, tzvi20 said:

HI @julwest78 you will know that this issue is resolved when you get a @Serif Info Bot

Probably not, in this case, as there is no bug tag for this topic. The info bot only posts when the topic has been tagged as related to a bug.

[Tim France]

@julwest78 Are you selecting "Model" in the import options? The paper-space layout ("Presentation1") is empty, as shown in AutoCAD:

However if you select Model, Designer imports this:

The warning about the proxy entity is still valid - AutoCAD essentially gives you the same warning - but it should not affect the import.

[Patrick Connor]

@tzvi20

Stop it, just stop tagging staff in other peoples threads, stop

[julwest78]

Thank you all for your prompt replies.
I am attaching a .DWG version that I am opening with Designer 2.3 Beta. When I open a presentation, I get something very similar to what Autocad offers. However, the Model always opens with the error message and I have to zoom in and out to access the drawing.

20230907_PLAN_ILE_DE_MONSIEUR_NAUTICFESTIVAL.dwg Capture d’écran 2023-10-26 à 16.15.22.pdf

[Tim France]

I see - this is a different file, but exhibiting the same problems. I will take a look.

[Tim France]

Hi @julwest78,

I've taken a closer look and it's a tough problem to solve. The trouble is your model has entities in it that are spread across a huge distance. Open the file in AutoCAD, then go View -> Zoom -> All, then hover over the middle of your model view. Take a look at the coordinates in the status bar at the bottom of AutoCAD:

If you go to the bottom left corner, the coordinate read out is (-2.5E81, -2.1E81) whereas the top right corner is (2.8E81, 1.7E81). If you're not familiar with scientific notation, 1E81 means 1 with 81 zeroes after it. To fit all of those onto a sensibly sized spread, Designer has to scale the entities down by a huge scale factor. AutoCAD doesn't have this problem because the model is boundless space but Designer has to specify a page size and you can't specify a page that is 1E80mm across - that's greater than the size of the observable universe!

Some entities are positioned normally within a relatively normal range (about 1E6). Unfortunately even those start to break down when you have to multiply them by such extreme scale factors, so I don't think there's much Designer can do with this document without it being edited first   Ideally you would select the entities you want to keep and then invert the selection, but as far as I'm aware, AutoCAD doesn't provide a "Select Inverse" option.

I'll have a think and see if there's anything easy I can add but if you can get the document cleaned up somehow I think you'll have much more success.

[Tim France]

If I hack a very crude filter into Designer that simply removes anything that is a 4E7 value away from (0,0), your file is imported like this:

[julwest78]

Thank you Tim for your analysis. I would love to be able to keep all the 2D drawing licenses and modify the files to match Designer. However, the problem is with the .DWGs I get from architects, surveyors or exhibition venues. If I have to rework the .DWG in Autocad, I might as well stick with Autocad. I think that's a shame because Designer is very intuitive and powerful. I don't have this problem importing certain fairly simple files. Ideally, I'd like to be able to clean things up directly in Designer.
Thank you very much for your invaluable help and I'm going to continue thinking about a 2D drawing solution with Designer.

[Tim France]

You may like to try out the latest beta, in particular this new options:

[julwest78]

It's amazing Tim you did it. Even the 3D models are properly flattened. Congratulations. I'm going to look at all this in detail. See you soon.

[julwest78]

However, the window is complete when the DWG file is opened, but not when it is imported.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "DWG file model is not imported corrected (file specific)" (REF: AF-955) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.3.0.2139".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.