data-connections Archives - vanderpol-consulting.com

13 April, 2012

AutoCAD® Map 3D 2013 – what’s new

AutoCAD® Map 3D GIS and mapping software offers easier access to design, GIS, imagery, point cloud, and business information from a broad range of sources, including ESRI, Bentley, Oracle, GE, and other software providers. By using comprehensive data models for the gas, water, wastewater, and electric industries, you can organize disparate asset information and apply industry standards and business requirements to your data.

Convert GIS and CAD Data to Intelligent Industry Models
With AutoCAD® Map 3D 2013 software, GIS professionals, planners, and civil engineers can more easily create and manage intelligent industry models by converting GIS and CAD data. Users can populate a new industry model from FDO data sources or DWG™ files and map feature classes and attributes. Then, convert the data to a model and save the database as a DWG/DWT file for use in future projects.

Access to Industry Models in More Formats
GIS professionals, planners, and civil engineers can access industry models in Microsoft SQL Server with AutoCAD Map 3D 2013. With the enhanced FDO provider, users can work with enterprise industry models on SQL Server as they do Oracle® systems.

5 April, 201012 February, 2018

AutoCAD® Map 3D 2011 – what’s new

AutoCAD^® 2011 software
Built on the AutoCAD 2011 Platform. AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 mapping software contains all the features and functionality of AutoCAD^® 2011 CAD software, installed automatically.

New Point Cloud Tools
First released as an Autodesk^® Subscription Advantage Pack for AutoCAD Map 3D 2010, the new point cloud tools allow for large sets of 3D laser scanning/LIDAR data sets ( often with hundreds of millions of points ) to be imported and visualized within AutoCAD Map 3D software. You can now also stylize point clouds by LAS classification, spatial extents, elevation, or intensity. Point clouds can be used to create DEM surfaces or new 3D features using standard AutoCAD^® drafting tools.

Enhanced Workflow Capabilities
Building on functionality introduced in AutoCAD Map 2010 and using Windows^® Workflow^tm Foundation, AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 makes it even easier to automate repetitive tasks. New Workflow tasks allow you to connect to any vector data source; change and save feature layer styles; and execute AutoCAD^®, AutoCAD Map 3D, and AutoCAD^® Raster Design commands.

New & Enhanced Data Support
With AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 you can work a wider variety of data. AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 includes support for ESRI^® ArcSDE^® 9.3.1 (32- and 64-bit), Oracle® 11gR2, Microsoft^® SQL Server^® 2008 SP1, PostGIS 1.3.6, PostgreSQL 8.3.7-1, and SQLite 3.6.14.

31 January, 201012 February, 2018

CAD and GIS, the right tools for the job ( II )

Last week I got the following question; how can I link a Shape-file and an Excel-sheet and create a resulting Shape-file with just a subset of the combined attributes.

In the Shape-file was the geometry of road area’s incl. road-number, road-area-number and road-area-sub-number. In the Excel-sheet there where the same numbers and other details about the road area’s. This Excel-sheet was exported from road management software.
If the AutoCAD Map user is an senior ArcGIS user, than you’ve a challange as consultant.

We did the following in the form of a handson workshop:

AutoCAD Map FDO Create a Join To link both files, we use the FDO-function: Create a Join. We need to connect both as FDO-connection into AutoCAD Map and there has to be one or more common fields to use as matching columns.

To make an FDO-connection with an Excel-sheet it is easier to import the sheet into an Access-table first. Than an FDO-connection can be created to the Access-table using the following Connection String: Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=pathnamefilename.mdb When the Excel-data is inside Access, it is also easy to make the columns used to join of the same database-type ( Text or Numbers ).

In the screen below is the FDO-connection to the Shape-file selected as Primary table and the FDO ODBC-connection to the Access-table as Secondary table. For the Join we linked the following columns:
WEG_NR002 -> Weg
WEGV_NR002 -> Vak
WEGVONR002 -> Ond

In the FDO DataGrid is the combination of all columns from both sources visible. To create a resulting Shape-file with just a subset of the attributes is not an easy task in AutoCAD Map. In ArcGIS a piece of cake, is in AutoCAD Map quite a challenge.

To create a new Shape-file with in the DBF-database the content of the original file supplemented with the Excel-sheet, it has to be exported into an SDF-file first. This local geospatial database has the complete combined structure. With FDO Schema Editor it is possible to create a new Shape-file with just the columns needed. With FDO BulkCopy funtionality the content of the temporary SDF-file can be copied over into the empty Shape-file, where just a subset of the columns can be selected.

AutoCAD Map FDO Create a Join

4 April, 2009

AutoCAD Map/FDO ESRI ArcSDE vs AutoCAD Map/FDO Oracle Spatial

AutoCAD Map/FDO <=> ESRI ArcSDE
Before AutoCAD Map can make an FDO-connection into ESRI ArcSDE server, there have to be 3 so called DLL’s ( pe.dll, sde.dll and sg.dll ) copied into the “AutoCAD Map software”/FDO/bin-folder.

Using “Map Display Manager => Data => Connect to Data” to add an ArcSDE connection in the Data Connect UI. In this connection screen the server name and instance needs to be entered and after that the username/password of a registered ArcSDE-user.

Map will research, with the ArcSDE-credentials of that user, which feature-tables are available and analyse those tables to determine the correct structure. Note: if the ArcSDE-user has full access to the database, than this analyse will take longer – take care that the user has restricted credentials only for the desired tables for a better performance.

After this analyse the list with available features will be displayed and the user can select one or mutiple tables to connect to the Map-session. Next the data is displayed, with the option to filter on location and/or attributes.

AutoCAD Map/FDO <=> Oracle Spatial
Before AutoCAD Map can make an FDO-connecton into an Oracle 9i or 10g Spatial server, there have to be an Oracle 10g Client ( or an Instant Client ) installed on the Map-machine. Besides that Map needs Oracle Workspace Manager to be installed on the Oracle server – this is used for Long Transactions and Versioning.

Using “Map Display Manager => Data => Connect to Data” to add an Oracle connection in the Data Connect UI. In this connection screen the service name needs to be entered and after that the username/password of a registered Oracle-user.

Map will search by default for FDO-schema’s ( tables with FDO-metadata ) and display these in the DataStore overview. Map can analyse also schema’s without FDO-metadata en determine the structure ( comparable with the description above for ArcSDE ).

After this the list with available features will be displayed and the user can select one or mutiple tables to connect to the Map-session. Next the data is displayed, with the option to filter on location and/or attributes.

28 March, 2009

ArcGIS for AutoCAD vs AutoCAD Map/FDO

ArcGIS for AutoCAD is a free of charge downloadable plugin from ESRI, currently available for AutoCAD 2007, 2008 and 2009.
With this functionality AutoCAD users have access to the ArcGIS Server Map Services and the desired map will be shown as an image behind the CAD-data.
The styling of the map is done by the server and the user can get info about the GIS-attributes.
This functionality is view only and doesn’t allow editting of the ArcGIS-data by AutoCAD.

AutoCAD Map/FDO is functionality to connect directly to for example an ESRI ArcSDE server and is available for AutoCAD Map 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010.
With this functionality AutoCAD Map users can make a selection of the GIS-feature classes they would like to connect to in their CAD-environment. These are not displayed as an image, but as vector data. That makes it possible to “snap” to them in drawing mode.
The styling of the map can be done by using AutoCAD Map Display Manager. The GIS-attributes are available in a so called Data Table, where you can select a record to highlight the corresponding object in the map ( and vise versa ).
This functionality allows you also to edit the ArcGIS-data by AutoCAD Map.