[Qgis-developer] Autocad DXF and Microstation DGN Save As

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Maurício,

On Tue, 22. Feb 2011 at 17:26:14 -0300, Maurício de Paulo wrote:
>    I think the Save Layer As option for dxf and dgn are a little bit
>    confusing for users.

Well, that dialog just lists what OGR offers.  And uses our OGR based vector
file writer to export the data.   As such it mostly format agnostic.

BTW there's even online help pointing that out and even pointing to the online
documentation of OGR's formats.

>    Some users have asked me "Why does it complain that the dxf can't hold
>    this field that I really need in the exported file?". I suppose it's
>    because dxf don't hold fields at al.

Right.

>   They should be translated to text data at most.

DXF and DGN are CAD formats - very different from and much more versatile than
GIS simple features.  I don't think there can be any one-fits-all way to import
or export GIS simple features from or to DXF/DGN.


>    As these two filetypes are together with other GIS formats people find it
>    hard to understand the difference.

There are probably a lot of other formats in that list most people know nothing
about - every format of which has it's own set of restrictions and mapping
problems from the source to the destination format.   So this sounds more like
a documentation or educational problem to me.


>    Could I sugest to remove them from "Save layer as" and try to write an
>    exporter based on the SVG exporter?

How would SVG relate to DXF/DGN?


Jürgen

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