Batch tool to identify coordinate system in dwg files

Question

I am trying to ingest 1000's of DWG files into ArcGis. Some of them are clearly georeferenced (that is, if I view them in ArcMap I can see that there are in the right place relative to my other GIS data). Many of them are not geo referenced.

I don't know own a copy of AutoCad but I have the free TrueView DWG viewer installed.

Is there a tool that I can use to scan all of the DWG files and list which of them have a coordinate system assigned (and hopefully tell me what CS is defined).

Thanks,

Answer 1

You can use arcpy.Describe on each AutoCAD dwg and get the spatial reference out of the Describe object.

dwg_list = []
for dirpath, subdirs, files in os.walk(source):
    for f in files:
            if f.endswith(".dwg") or f.endswith(".DWG"):
            fullpath = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
            desc = arcpy.Describe(fullpath)
            dwg_sr = desc.spatialReference
            print(f)
            print(dwg_sr.name)
            dwg_list.append(fullpath)