Writing Multiple Geometry features to Smallworld v4 (List Based)

From fmepedia

This page contains an example FME Workspace created by an fmepedia user.   See the attached files list at the foot of this page for the zip file containing this workspace.

From: Safe Software training materials

Workspace

The attached workspace takes data from an AutoCAD dataset (railways.dwg) and adds it to the Cambridge database in Smallworld. In this example there are two Smallworld geometries - a railway centre-line and annotation for each line. It is a little more complex to set up than the hard-coded multi-writing example, but pays off with more advantages in the long run.

Screenshot

Points to Note

1) A Counter is used to create a unique ID for each line feature. The ID will be used later to join line with annotation.

2) A stream of data is routed through a Labeller to create annotation features for the lines.

3) Instead of exposing and setting the Smallworld geometry names as constants, they are set here as an attribute sworld_name using AttributeCreators.

4) An Aggregator is used to join each line to its annotation - using the ID number previously defined (group-by = ID). The difference here is that a list is created with the name sworld_geometry - this automatically gives us sword_geometry{0}.sworld_name and sword_geometry{1}.sworld_name by creating the list (sworld_geometry) with the previously defined attributes (sworld_name)

5) As with the other multi-geometry writing, a user attribute "centre_line" has been defined in the destination feature type with a user attribute "annotation" for the label features. These are defined in fme as sworld_chain and sworld_text. This attribute matches the geometry name in Smallworld.

6) Really a non-point! The list format attribute sword_geometry{0}.sworld_name does not need to be exposed or set with a constant. The advantages are that the order of features in the aggregate does not matter (as it did in the hard-coded multi-writing example) and nor will there be a problem if not each item possesses each type of geometry (eg a line w/o annotation will not cause a traceback).