Export to CAD fails without reporting errors or stops responding indefinitely

Description

In some instances, when the Export to CAD tool is processing in the background, the tool fails without returning an error or stops responding indefinitely when processing in the foreground.

Cause

There are several causes that could cause the Export to CAD tool to fail.

• Records or fields in the attribute table of the input feature contain special characters. Special characters such as commas or slashes are not allowed in CAD. This is a known limitation.
• The geodatabase annotation feature class contains blank fields.
• When using an annotation feature class, no point, line, or polygon feature class included as input features. Therefore, there is no geometry feature class to define the boundary of the annotation extent.
• Annotations created in the geodatabase from Maplex labels cannot be converted to CAD. It is a known limitation that annotations converted from a label created with the Maplex Label Engine are not supported in CAD.

Solution or Workaround

Depending on the cause, use one of the following solutions:

• Remove special characters from the records or fields in the attribute table

1. Start an edit session.
2. Remove any special characters in the fields of the input attribute table.
3. Save the edits, stop the editing session and run the Export to CAD tool again.

• Ensure all fields contain a value

• Ensure a feature class is included as an input feature

• Use an annotation that is not converted from a Maplex label