The GRD writer creates and writes feature data to the GRD file specified by the DATASET directive. Any GRD file with the same name is overwritten with the new feature data.
The GRD writer provides the following capabilities when writing GRD files.
- User-defined Linetypes: New linetypes can be defined on attributes attached to features being written to the GRD file.
- User-defined Layers: Users must define the layers into which features are stored. The layers can also define the attributes to be stored within the feature.
- Copy Block Definitions: Often users have existing GRD data files that contain block definitions they want the translated data to carry. Specifying the TEMPLATE_FILE keyword in the mapping file results in block definitions being copied from the existing file to the output GRD file. These blocks can then be referred to by insert entities.
- Copy Linetypes: Predefined linetypes within existing GRD files are copied making them available for use by features being written to the destination file. Specifying the TEMPLATE_FILE keyword in the mapping file results in the predefined linetypes being copied from the template file to the output drawing file. Feature entities can then refer to these linetype definitions.
- Copy Layer Definitions: Layer definitions within an existing GRD file identified by TEMPLATE_FILE enables layer definitions to be copied to the destination dataset and then referenced.
- Automatic Block Creation: When a feature that cannot be written as a single GRD vector entity is passed to the writer—such as a donut polygon—the writer automatically defines a GRD block and inserts entities necessary to represent the feature.
Workbench Writer Parameters
This format does not contain format-specific writer-level parameters.