Add CAD. dwg file to ArcGIS Pro - match the annotation placement

Anonymous User

Hello all,

I'm using ArcGIS Pro 3.1.0.

When adding a CAD .dwg to Pro the CAD annotation color and location don't match how it looks in AutoCAD. This seems to be an area that needs improvement. Does anyone else have this problem?

Pro:

AutoCAD:

Thanks.

VaibhavS · ‎04-05-2023

I found an old BUG-000084139 : Stacked annotation feature classes are displayed incorrectly when exported to CAD and viewed in a CAD Viewer. The same annotations appear black in color when imported from CAD to geodatabase in ArcMap.

It seems like it is not within the scope of the CAD to Geodatabase tool to import the color symbology of CAD text entities. There are several defects regarding annotations.

Is this issue encountered with a different .DWG file as well? Have we imported the .DWG file into a file geodatabase or an enterprise geodatabase? Are we noticing any discrepancy in the areas of the features if compared to the data seen in AutoCAD and ArcGIS Pro?

Thanks,

Vaibhav

Anonymous User · ‎04-05-2023

Hi @VaibhavS ,

Thank you for the response.

To address your points:

This is a native CAD .dwg. I have not imported CAD to geodatabase. I don't need to or want to - this is for viewing purposes only. It would save me time and headaches to be able to see this in Pro how it was intended instead of having to visually compare ArcGIS Pro on one screen and DWG TrueView of the .dwg on the other screen.

This happens frequently with all different .dwgs that I receive from other people. And it's been happening for years. I can't be the only one - I might have to post to the AEC group to ask also.

The lines and polygons (areas and locations) seem to read perfectly fine within ArcGIS Pro. I use these survey grade .dwgs to create GIS polygons so thank goodness that's working.

But since you are finding defects and bugs related to this idea it would seem the software is not capable of viewing CAD .dwg annotation correctly in ArcGIS Pro, yet anyway. The position, size of text, and color of text are not matched.

Further investigation: I found the problem - https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/conversion/cad-to-geodatabase.htm "CAD annotation is treated as points in ArcGIS Pro".

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/cad/cad-data-in-arcgis-pro.htm "attempt to mimic the symbology of the source CAD layer". Attempting it?

It's not annotation at all - it's a point that's labeled. Don't call it "Annotation and Annotation Group" in ArcGIS Pro, please. How very misleading. This will never match what the CAD .dwg shows. So this idea should be clarified: Have ArcGIS Pro treat CAD annotation as annotation and read all of the properties of the annotation.

I ran the CAD to Geodatabase tool - far worse results than reading the native cad file:

What happened to the "Import CAD Annotation Tool" that existed in ArcMap?

Thank you.

AndreaB_ · ‎10-18-2023

OP here

AlexZhuk · ‎01-22-2024

Apparently, it has been implemented! See here: Provide an option to retain CAD annotation as they... - Esri Community

MichaelDavidsonPM · ‎03-22-2024

Hi @AndreaB_ ,

Thanks for posting this idea, and for the clarification given in 04-05-2023: "Have ArcGIS Pro treat CAD annotation as annotation and read all of the properties of the annotation."

In ArcGIS Pro 3.2, when reading in CAD datasets, default feature classes now include Point, Polyline, Polygon, Annotation (newly added), and Multipatch.