Is there a way to get the 3D geometry from AutoCAD and the associated data fields. I know the meshes is ‘in-progress’ but was wondering if anybody found an alternative way?
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Hi @machiel ! Could you go into more detail about what associated data fields for AutoCAD solids you mean? Brep conversions are very difficult to do, so for now we are converting all surface and solid geometry out of AutoCAD as meshes.
Since AutoCAD is primarily a 2D drafting software, figuring out how to convert breps is fairly low priority at the moment as we don’t anticipate many users finding that useful compared to the amount of work it would take to develop. I’d be curious to know the particular use case you have for modelling solids in AutoCAD and which application(s) you’re trying to send them to!
Something quite interesting is the ‘assumption’ that AutoCAD is only 2D; I am using this term very loosely for the reason that AutoCAD has various specialized toolsets that works with 3D modelling.
As of interest, here is a LINK to all AutoCAD products – not all is really used for 3D modelling.
However, the one I was focusing on at this stage is for Advance Steel which ultimately model’s 3D geometry and I can open this in ‘vanilla’ AutoCAD and use the Speckle exporter, however my geometry only produces the lines instead of the 3D geometry and also avoids the information hosted to those elements.
I completely understand the low priority of AutoCAD and as a possible solution, have you investigated an exporter out of Navisworks? As this can open any AutoCAD 3D model and from there can export all the required data fields and geometry.
I did also make a suggestion to include the Dynamo packages for Advance Steel which would also increase the use of Speckle there.
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Ah so that’s also something interesting, you were not referring to the AutoCAD software directly but rather one of a few products owned by Autodesk that runs on and is compliant with AutoCAD. A similar example is our Civil3D connector which supports Civil3D when it is run on its own platform and also on AutoCAD. So what you are requesting is an Advance Steel connector - I see that thread has already been started!
On the topic of Navisworks, a connector has been discussed, but as far as I’m aware Navisworks converts all 3d geometry to mesh anyways. If it’s the Advance Steel class properties you are interested in and not necessarily brep geometry, we can look into comparing priorities for a Navisworks vs Advance Steel connector 
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