Importing CAD data to geodatabase in ArcGIS 10.5

Question

Hi,

i am using the CAD to Geodatabase tool to import DWG files to a geodatabase.

In ArcGIS 10.2 and 10.3, this works perfectly well.

But when I try to do the same thing in ArcGIS 10.5 (no matter if I use the tool in ArcMap or if I use a Python script), I get the following error:

000354 : The name contains invalid characters.

If this refers to table names in the DWG file myself, then I don't know what to do; I have no CAD software and cannot change the DWG files myself. And it wasn't a problem in earlier versions of ArcGIS...

Can somebody help?

Thanks,

Claudia

Robert_LeClair · Answer

Thx for the update Tony - good to hear it's working with the corrected syntax.

TonyHowze · Answer

Thanks for the advice, however, my background processing was already disabled, and there were no special characters.

The tool was behaving very oddly, as it would work on occasion.  I was operating on an Iterate Dataset tool to batch convert some drawing files.  I wanted to specify specific layers in the dwg to convert to a feature class, so I was using the output of the Iterate Dataset tool for the input of Make Feature Layer tool using a definition query.  The problem I was having was in my syntax of the input feature option in the Make Feature Layer tool:  %output%\polyline was my initial input.  %output% being the variable of the iterate dataset which should be the pathname to the dwg iteration.  The tool started working when I changed my input to %output%\polyline, with two slashes.

Robert_LeClair · Answer

Two things to try:

* Disable background geoprocessing from the Geoprocessing Menu->Geoprocessing Options
* Add the layer to a Data Frame. Does it have a hyphen in the name?  If so, rename it without a hyphen.