Troubleshooting FME and Smallworld
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Q) I get a message "'SWORLD' writer is not licensed for this FME version. Contact your Distributor" What is the problem?
A) Your FME license is not sufficient to support Smallworld translations. You need at least the FME for Smallworld license.
You can check your license type using Help->About FME on the menubar in FME Workbench.
Q) When I translate Smallworld v4 data all the text/symbol rotation and justifications are lost - what is the problem?
A) This was a known issue fixed by Patch P93557_1 for Smallworld FME Translator 4 - part of TSB 106 - which you can obtain from GE.
Q) I'm writing data to Smallworld v4.x but keep getting "invalid justification" errors. What is wrong?
A) Two possible causes, but both related to DLL versions.
1) If the error is "invalid justification 0" then you are writing text features without a valid justification. Some early versions of the Smallworld v4 translator had this problem. You can resolve this by setting the follow format attributes:
sworld_geometry{0}.sworld_horiz_just = 1
sworld_geometry{0}.sworld_vert_just = 1
Note that the {0} part depends on if you are using multiple geometries and, if you are, what geometry number the text feature is.
2) If the error is "invalid justification 12345678" (where 12345678 is some apparently random number) then this is a fault which you can fix with a simple update to your DLL.
There are new DLL downloads on our FTP site for both Smallworld v4.0 (ftp://ftp.safe.com/fme/smallworld/sworld40dll.zip) and Smallworld v4.1 (ftp://ftp.safe.com/fme/smallworld/sworld41dll.zip).
Q) I’ve imported data to Smallworld but my text doesn’t appear in the local character set. What can I do?
A) Local character sets (Thai, Cyrillic etc) are not handled by the GE Reader/Writer. You would need to have their Magik code amended for your particular purpose.
You could contact your local Smallworld supplier who might be able to help, or have a Smallworld consultant edit the Magik code for you.
Safe Software is not responsible for supporting the Smallworld-FME Interface Magik code.
However, the SpatialBiz FME Plugin for Smallworld supports FME Text encoding for import / export of Smallworld data. Data represented in local character sets can be translated as with other FME supported formats.
Q) When I read Smallworld data it appears too large and needs scaling by 0.01 - why is this?
A) The issue here is that Smallworld data is stored using a coordinate system based on world units (or database units) which are usually mm, cm or in; In Smallworld 3 when you exported the data the coordinate would be in the original Smallworld world units(mm, cm or in) and you would have to rescale them to the units of measure of the destination GIS (usually metres or feet). Similarly, for import, the source GIS units might have to be scaled to match the Smallworld world units.
Although you could fix the data using a Scaler transformer in Workbench this isn't the recommended solution since you'd need to do this on every workspace you created. The preferred option is to create a custom coordinate system.
If you create a custom coordinate system that defines the source data as having world units (mm, cm or in) then the data will automatically be converted when it is written to a destination that is defined with a coordinate system in metres or feet.
For Smallworld 4, the data is imported or exported in the application coordinate system units. For the Cambridge database, this is in Britsh National Grid metres, so no coordinate system scaling should be required. In the Cambridge database, you can change the applciation coordainte system units in the register.magik file, i.e.:
....\Smallworld4\fme400\modules\swaf_fme_application\source\register.magik file
See the Workbench help system for details on how to create a custom coordinate system.
