PowerCADD Forum

Occasionally I will receive an AutoCad DWG file that I need to open in PowerCADD that causes PC to freeze (that dreaded spinning beach ball). I suspect that I'm not the only one to encounter this difficulty so I thought to ask what others do to resolve the issue...
I've already asked the following of the AutoCAD user without success:
1. Save the file to AutoCAD 2010 or earlier.
2. Purge the AutoCAD file.
The file starts to open than hangs...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Recently, I've received some AC drawings that I had a hard time getting to open. Finally, I used the ODAFile Converter app to same them as 2010 Binary DXF's and was able to open them. (There are many DXF variations to which to convert the files, but I don't know much about them. The 2010 Binary type worked for me, so I've stuck with it.) After opening the DXF files in PC, it was apparent that they contained some objects way out in space (away from the meat of the drawing), which is I suspect is why the AC files wouldn't open.

Thank you Patrick. I'm surprised by the speed of your response!

After posting my request I looked through earlier threads and found that I had asked a similar question earlier this year but never followed up to see the responses...

Anyway, in that thread, Matt suggested using ODAFile Converter as well and after trying different versions I too found that translating to a Binary DXF finally worked.

This has been a recurring problem for me over the years and I must say that it is really great to finally have a solution.

Happy Thanksgiving

It may be unrelated, but in working on programming source files, which are text files, I sometimes encounter a file that will crash the computer when deleting some text. The problem is that the text will contain a carriage return character at the end of a line of text, instead of a line feed character. The solution for me is Select All, Cut, Paste and Save, then the file is safe to work with.

I find I get the spinning cursor at least every day and I have to restart the computer, thank heaven for SSDs and their quick restart.

I remember we used to have some way to purge off page objects, and maybe we still do.

Alfred

Where does one find this ODAFile Converter? It does not seem to be on my hard drive.

Found it linked in another thread - https://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/o ... _converter

I misunderstood, that I would find this among the folders from my PowerCadd install.

I think it is in the Utilities folder within the PowerCADD application folder. I downloaded a more recent version of ODAConverter, but it wouldn’t run on my 2015 iMac under Sierra, so I am glad I still had the older copy.

patrickm wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:00 am

I think it is in the Utilities folder within the PowerCADD application folder.

definitely not in mine, but maybe my install is very old at this point.

lava wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:01 am

patrickm wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:00 am

I think it is in the Utilities folder within the PowerCADD application folder.

definitely not in mine, but maybe my install is very old at this point.

Contact me if you want me to email it to you.

Greg - It’s in my Utility folder in PC…..but, I believe I remember having to download it from the ODAFile website…..Also, there is an app developed by Microspot (MacDraft) which is a DWG reader. You can open and mark up plans in the DWG format, etc. The only issue is you can’t save as a DWG, only a PDF or ANN file. It’s only $49. I’m hoping with the new version of PC, we’ll be up to date on opening/reading DWG files. I remember Todd referred me to the ODAFile site in one of my posts last year.