Studio 2009 DWG load changes

[amorsell]

It looks like Studio 2009 only supports converting DWG layers to SDF. This is different than prior versions of Studio where we could convert DWG to drawing (DWF) sources either one per layer or combined. What the heck? Has this functionality been removed in Studio 2009? A client needs to load DWG files as drawing sources to retain the graphic fidelity and not have to mess with all of the layers, but this is no longer possible. Further, the options to load display manager maps, layers, map queries or map themes no longer exists. The only option is to load layers (which admittedly is the most common way to do things).

Looks like they will have to use Studio 2008 with an MGE 2008 / MGOS 1.2 site and then import the package into MGE 2009 / MGOS 2.0. Or, perhaps Autodesk wants us to pre-publish to DWF from Map or to publish directly from Map. Whatever the rationale, I sure hate to see functionality REMOVED from new versions of software. This item, the fact that the "Builder" view in expression viewer is gone, and that Studio 2009 cannot connect to 2008 and below sites (hello, backward compatibility!) really bothers me. Oh well, time to stop whining and move on to working around the issues........

[dswilson]

The Builder view in expressions has been replaced by the new robust expression builder which supports many new functions not available before. The user also has the option to just free form enter the expression.

Map based DWG import is achieved from Publish to MapGuide from Map 3D. AutoCAD based DWG import still exists. There were various complexity issues with trying to maintain both variations within MapGuide.

Still feedback is always appreciated.

Regards,
Dave

[amorsell]

I can certainly appreciate the complexities of DWG loading through Studio, DETE, and so on. Forcing users to publish DWG's through Map to achieve certain results previously available through Studio does seem like a backward step IMHO.

I will give kudos to the FDO operators and functions and intellisense-like interface being available in the expression builder, but it is free-form only, and when creating something like a tooltip with a bunch of nested concats, it gets really ugly really fast. That's where the old, friendly "Builder" mode was really handy: you could use that mode and then fine-tune it in "Advanced" mode. Now, it's ONLY advanced mode......

Try creating this expression in Studio 2009. I just did it and it was not fun.
concat('

', concat('\nParcel ID: ', concat("PID", concat('\nOwner Name: ', concat(NullValue ( "OWNER_NAME", [text property] ) , concat('\nAddress: ', "SITE_ADDRE"))))))))

[amorsell]

A large chunk of the expression statement in my prior post got stripped by the group software since it was HTML syntax.