How to import a dwg city object inodiscreet archicad objects

[Paul King]

Hi - I have a single dwg model of an entire city worth of buildings that I need to bring into ArchiCAD.

If I import directly, it comes through as a single huge library part.

However I need to be able to switch on and off individual buildings.

There are literally a thousand or more buildings in this model, and while each building is very simply modelled, selecting and saving each one out separately from AutoCAD is simply not an option


I need a way to automate the process and to end up with a thousand separate library parts or meshes or other corresponding entities in ArchiCAD

Help?

[Eduardo Rolon]

If they are in different layers you could 3DSout them from autocad and choose that it separates the objects in the file by the layers. The same might work if they have different colors.

[Paul King]

ejrolon wrote:
If they are in different layers you could 3DSout them from autocad and choose that it separates the objects in the file by the layers. The same might work if they have different colors.

The buildings are all a single colour and layer in AutoCAD - and there are 1000 of them!

[Eduardo Rolon]

You can try one of these 2 settings to see if they help. If I remember correctly one "might" create individual objects based on the 3D Information.

[Paul King]

I have found another way that definitely works!

First open the dwg file in Deep Exploration, select all and use CADTools/Separate meshes command, then open file in AutoCAD Architect or other package that can export to IFC, then import IFC into ArchiCAD.
Result is all objects brought in as separate entities, in one hit.