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I am trying to import an acadders survey drawing which contains trees which are listed as a "shape'.
For some reason these "shapes" (trees) are not importing into Dcad (13 or 14).
I have tried exporting the drawing from Acad as various versions of dwg files as well as dxf and still the trees don't import into Dcad.
Can anyone shed any light?
In Acad the trees are on varying layers, but when I check those layers in the Dcad layer manager after the import those layers are listed as "0" entities or empty.
I always thought (maybe mistakenly) that a shape was some type of font file? Or is a shape entity different to a "shp" entity?
Any help will be appreciated as my client tells me that the location of these trees are critical to the design.

Ok, no suggestions then!
I have tried to look into it a bit further and have deduced (I think) that the trees are a "shape" file which is read from a "shx" file. I suspect it is a bit like
reading an x'ref or symbol. The trees are showing up in the acad file and I have been given the "shx" file (Geocomp.shx). I have tried dxf'ing the acad file as well as saving out in various acad versions and then tried importing into Dcad, I suspect that because the trees are being read from an shx file they are not physically in the acad file and therfor aren't being imported into Dcad. I'm not a programmer, so I am making wild assumptions here.
Can anyone shed any light, or at least tell me if I am on the right track with my thinking.

Sorry, but I've never come across this before. Could you send me a copy of the DWG file?

you may want to explode the shapes (trees) on ACAD then save it and import to DataCAD

I've done this when Xrefs from AWalls don't show when imported to DataCAD

Hope this helps

I've found that "Awalls" (as Juve calls them) will be converted so you can edit them if the drawing is saved out to an Acad V12 format. This **should** work for any proxy items - but I'm not sure about the shape entity, though. I'd be happy to play with it if you want to PM me to set it up.

These may be "proxy" objects. All proxy object in AutoCAD need to be exploded to polylines for Datacad to read.

My work-around should work, then.

Thanks everyone for your help and support.
I have asked the client to request another file with the proxies exploded.
In the meantime I have tried some of your suggestions.:
I'm not able to explode the trees, I am getting a message saying - "was not able to be exploded". Arthur you mention exploding to polylines - I have just been typing 'explode' in the command line and then picking the tree, is there a special command to explode to polylines? (other than just typing 'explode' at the command line.)
I downloaded an "object enabler" for Autocad Civil 3d, - didn't make much difference!
I have sent the file to Alan at his suggestion to see if he can help.
Sorry if all this is a bit basic (from an Autocad command point of view) I don't know much about running Autocad - try and avoid it as much as possible - so far quite successfully!

Today I finally got a drawing from the surveyor with the trees saved as a block. Interestingly when I import this drawing into Dcad (13 or 14) I still don't see the trees! It imports as a symbol which had 3 circles in it with a white fill in the circles. No trees!! (If I explode the block in Autocad they turn back into shapes)
Even more interesting is in Acad 2010 I selected the block by putting an area around it and copying it to the clipboard and tried pasting into Datacad (13). Initially it seemed that what was being pasted was a bitmap/jpeg with a white background and the trees on it, when I went to delete the said jpeg, to my amazement the white background was deleted, but the trees remained as polylines! Albeit not to the correct scale, but to the correct proportions though. So I turned them into an Edit set and enlarged the edit set to get the trees to the correct size and then repositioned them to where they needed to go.
Not the best solution, but at least I do have the elusive trees now.