No direct relation, but if you go back sometime in the past his family tree and my family tree will merge. I did some of my geneology on the Wolford side back to Germany.
Only problem with that method is that it won't provide database links from each individual record to one or multiple polyline objects. And yes I select the Line option in the SHP export, but the original objects are polylines. Regardless AutoCAD tech support solved part of my problem and the explanation form tech support follows below:
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AUTOCAD MAP TECH SUPPORT RESPONSE:
The Map Import function writes additional information to AutoCAD entities (Xdata is just a way to add extra information to a drawing database and its entities via the API) to maintain the relationships from the source application/format. An example which might apply here is that you can group objects in ArcView I have an open SR with a customer that has a data set in a Shapefile that he knows has a few sets of these groupings. He expected the Import Export process to break these groupings. This utility specifically sets this special extra information on the AutoCAD entity to null which essentially removes that entity from the 'aggregation'.
The person who wrote the utility has been kind enough to make it available so that selection sets of multiple objects can be cleared. I have added this file to the SR. The function is REMOVEMAPIMPORTGROUPS.
You would use this to clear (null) the specific Xdata for objects you know to be aggregated. If you wished to remove the aggregation from all entities for the import I’d isolate the AutoCAD layer and run this utility with a window crossing.
I have tested this with some data you sent. In the test.shp file you will see that the 9 entities were exported as 7 features. In the testxdataremoved.shp all 9 entities are discrete features after clearing the Xdata value for the aggregation.
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My comments:
After using the LSP file to remove the extraneous data, I successfully exported the SHP file where each record was properly linked to the proper polyline objects. The only caveat is that when I attached multple polyline objects to a single record in the exported shape file it duplicated that record for each of the multiple polyline objects. I would prefer that all of the polyline objects for that particular record would result in only one record being exported (ie the polylines would be grouped). I don't think AutoCAD Map can currently do this, but I am certain that the ESRI software.