DWG to DGN and Vise Versa

[cfalkowski]

Hey Team, 

I was working on a project for a client and they have there templates in DGN format which is MicroStation, a program my company does not use. I am able to import the DGN file into autoCAD and see everything however it strips there Border/Template of all attributes. One of our deliverables is to send them the drawings back to them in DGN format however we will not be able to do so since we cannot get the Attributes to pull through on the original import. 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to import a DGN file into AutoCAD while keeping all Attributes from there blocks? or at lease a way to view the DGN so we can see the attributes and maybe recreate them??

Thanks,  

[Tomislav.Golubovic]

Firstly can you confirm that all the attributes came through in the original file?

[Michiel.Valcke · Accepted solution]

I've had similar issues in a past project and honestly if I had to do it over, it is faster to just recreate the title block with attributes from scratch. Imported blocks that need to retain their attributes are better imported just for the geometry and then modified manually to re-add the attributes. If you really don't feel like doing manual work you'll get the best result by exporting to dxf or dwg from microstation instead of importing the dgn into Autocad. There are more options to customize the export out of MS as well. So you can push the buttons until you get the best result for what you need.

The two cad models really do not translate well one to the other and (maybe understandably) neither company is interested in making a great effort to create a better translation between dxf/dwg and dgn.

[spookyfreakss]

I successfully addressed a similar issue in a previous project but thankfully we found this tool called Translation Manager, this helped me seamlessly convert my DGN to DWG format and vice versa without messing up the template. So was able to work on their file using AutoCAD and send it back to them easily in DGN format