FAQ: How is an Advance Steel model opened in pure AutoCAD®?

Note: The answer is referring to version 2016 and higher.

There are two ways to open an Advance Steel model in pure AutoCAD®:

• Using Object Enabler (OE) application.
• Exploding the model to ACIS (recommended only when Object Enabler application is not available).

Open an Advance Steel model in pure AutoCAD® using the Object Enabler (OE) application

Autodesk offers downloadable enablers that you can use to access, display, and manipulate object data in applications different from their native environment.

In order to open Advance Steel models in pure AutoCAD®, on workstations that do not have Advance Steel installed, you need to install the appropriate Object Enabler (OE).

The Autodesk enabler for Advance Steel 20xx model objects is Advance Steel Object Enabler 20xx and can be downloaded from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

On workstations that do have Advance Steel installed, it is not necessary to install the Advance Steel Object Enabler because the object enabler is already part of the full Advance Steel installation.

The Advance Steel Object Enabler is compatible to its correspondent version of Advance Steel.

Note: The Advance Steel Object Enabler 2016 is compatible with Advance Steel 2015, Advance Steel 2015.1 and Advance Steel 2016 files.

Open an Advance Steel model in pure AutoCAD by exploding the model to ACIS

To open an Advance Steel DWG model in pure AutoCAD® without using the Object Enabler, you need to explode the model to ACIS. Prior to this, all the elements that cannot be exploded need to be manually deleted. For easier selection, use the Quick Select function.

1. Open the Quick Select dialog box: Tools Utilities (Quick Select).

2. Make the following settings:

   • From the Object type drop-down list, select the type of elements you want to delete.

     All the types with names containing the AST prefix are Advance Steel objects. You need to keep the following types: ASTGRID, ASTBEAM, ASTBEAMFEATURE, ASTPLATE, ASTSCREWBOLTPATTERN, ASTPLATEFEATURE, ASTBEAMHOLEPATTERN, ASTPLATEHOLEPATTER. All the other Advance Steel object types must be deleted manually.

   • Operator: Choose Select All.
3. Click OK to select the corresponding elements in the model.
4. Press the Delete key to delete the selected objects from the model.
5. Once you have deleted all elements that cannot be exploded, select the remaining elements in the model, right click and use the Explode to ACIS command.
6. Save and close the .dwg file.

To delete Advance Steel objects from external dwg:

This step is necessary in order to delete all the remaining Advance Steel objects that couldn't be manually deleted.

1. In a new dwg file, use the Delete all AS objects from external dwg command: Tools tab Tools panel (Delete all AS objects from external dwg).

2. Select the .dwg you want to explode and click Open.
3. Close Advance Steel.
4. Open AutoCAD®.
5. On the command line, enter "demandload" and set the value to 2.
6. Open the exploded DWG file.

7. Save it, then re-use "demandload" command and set the value to 3.

The file can now be opened in pure AutoCAD® on any computer and it cannot be rolled back to the Advance Steel model.