About Conversion Templates

The current map might include a point feature class called Transformer. If you style the Transformer points to use a symbol called TRANSFORMER, add an AutoCAD block to your map called TRANSFORMER so it will appear the same way in the converted drawing. If the conversion process does not find a same-named block in the map, the points will be converted to plain AcDb points. Alternatively, you can add the TRANSFORMER block to a template that you specify when you use the Save Current Map To AutoCAD wizard. In either of these situations, the conversion process will use the TRANSFORMER block for the converted points.

Creating a template is also useful if you need the map to be styled differently in AutoCAD than it is in AutoCAD Map 3D toolset. For example, if you convert maps to drawings for a particular colleague or consultant, you can use a template to specify the styling that your colleague prefers or requires. In that case, the TRANSFORMER block referenced in the template might look different from the one in your map. During conversion, the template version is always used if you specify a template.

Note: In AutoCAD Map 3D toolset, enhanced styling options were added. As a result, older linestyles have the phrase “-old” appended to them. When you convert a drawing that uses the older styling options, the conversion process first looks for an AutoCAD linetype with that exact name. If it does not find one, it looks for an AutoCAD linetype with the same name but without the -old suffix. If you use styles from a release earlier than 2012, you can create linetypes that include the -old extension to be sure that such styles are mapped to the linestyles you specify.

In addition to using templates, you can control the appearance of the hatch patterns used by the conversion process using hatch pattern files. Hatch pattern files (*.pat) are loaded into AutoCAD at startup, and are available for any DWG file. If the conversion process finds a hatch pattern in these files whose name matches a fill style you used in your map, the same-named hatch pattern will be used in the converted drawing.