IMAGINiT Geospatial Solutions Blog

WLIA 2010 Wrap-up

Well, I just finished my session, and with the exception of my VM not working properly, everything went off without any problems.  Unfortunately, the attendance was a little lower than I had hoped…  but that was kind of to be expected with an 8am time slot on a Friday (after a night of conference ‘mixing’ )  Regardless, it was good to be out in front of the GIS centric audience showing the potential benefits of AutoCAD and MapGuide.

It was a little tough to get some Q/A going, but in the end the attendees opened up a bit, and there were some good questions asked and discussions by those attendance.  In addition to some great off-topic hockey discussions on the upcoming Olympic Men's Hockey Semi-Final and ultimate Finals…

The silent auction will be wrapping up shortly, and then take-down begins, and I get to spend the rest of my afternoon at the Appleton International Airport, and hopefully catch the hockey game during my extended layover in Minneapolis.  Overall, the conference seems to be a success, with many comments of great sessions and networking opportunities.  From an IMAGINiT corporate perspective, my colleague Bob Rendek and I feel it was well worth attending and we have some good visibility and leads for the territory, along with some good feedback.

The 2011 edition of the WLIA will be held in Madison, WI.

Well, it’s time to start taking down…

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

WLIA 2010

So… I had to miss the start of the Canada – Russia Men's Olympic Hockey quarter-final yesterday because I couldn’t stream the Canadian broadcast from a US based IP while sitting in the Minneapolis airport!  But I’m Canadian!! it shouldn’t matter ‘where’ I am? but alas it does matter where you are which would seem to be a serious flaw in broadcast copyrights if you ask me…  But I digress…

My travels were bringing me to Wisconsin, so, hello from the Wisconsin Land Information Association 23rd Annual Conference in Appleton, Wisconsin.

This year’s theme is ABC’s of GIS: ACCESS, BUILD, COMMUNICATE. We all are faced with challenges regarding information and education at our workplaces. We need to get information, work with information and disseminate information to others. We educate by presenting to a county board or oversight committee the benefits of a new technology investment, explaining to a customer how an investment in a specific software or service will benefit their organization, learning a new process to streamline our workflow or showing a public user how to navigate a GIS website. We are constantly working with these challenges.

The conference is 3 days of training and education opportunities for the attendees.  Day 1 kicks-off the conference with a series of 1/2 day workshops on a variety of topics.  The following 2 days consistes of dozens of classes broken up into 5 different tracks:

• Surveying, Mapping and Data Development
• Data Integration and Distribution
• Politics, Policy, and Administration
• Innovative Applications and Technology
• GIS/Education & Awareness

My role is two-fold at this conference: in addition to presenting a class Friday morning in the Surveying, Mapping and Data Development track, I am also doing booth duty in the exhibit area as technical resource to support our sales team.  The traffic through the exhibit areas has been pretty steady, and we’ve met some great people, had many good conversations. 

I’m busy making some final tweaks to my presentation, and looking forward to the Women’s Olympic Hockey Final tonight between Canada and the US.  Should be a great Game…  I apologize to my US colleagues and friends, but….  Go Canada! 

Geospatial DWFs

Do you DWF?

If No?  Why not?

For those who do not know what a DWF is, my colleague Veredith Keller gives a good description here.  Essentially, a DWF is a highly compressed file format for efficient distribution of detailed design data. 

DWFs can be printed or published directly from Autodesk products and are a great way to share data with people that do not have AutoCAD.  Autodesk Design Review is a free, yes FREE, application available from Autodesk to view DWFs. 

But wait! Autodesk Design Review is much more than just a viewer!  ADR is a full collaboration tool that provides annotation, measuring and markup tools for non-AutoCAD users. Design Review users can markup and save DWFs, and then those DWFs, including the markups, can be overlaid in AutoCAD.

DWF with markups in Autodesk Design Review

 
Same markups overlaid in AutoCAD Map

So, as you can see, the DWF (and DWFx) file format, and Autodesk Design Review are a powerful set of tools for team collaboration.

But I thought this post was about ‘Geospatial DWFs’ you ask?

I’m getting to that…  I just thought an overview of DWF could prove helpful to put everything into context.  So what is a ‘Geospatial DWF’?  Simply put, a Geospatial DWF is a DWF on steroids! 

A little bit more background information for context…

When working with FDO data sources we have access to all of the attribute information associated with your features.  Below, we can a feature parcel selected, and the associated attributes.

So, wouldn’t it be great if those attributes could be published out somehow, so the users could see those attributes as well without having AutoCAD…

Well…  they can! And that is where the Geospatial DWF comes in. 

Here we can see this same data that has been published into the DWF and we can see the associated attribute data in the DWF!

So how do you include the associated attributes?  I’m glad you asked!

In AutoCAD Map, on the Output Tab > Export to DWF/PDF Panel, there is an Options command:

This command will fire up a dialog box that allows you to choose exactly what attributes you want to publish from each of the connected feature sources:

After the DWF is published, it will then contain all of the attributes that were specified.

So what is the benefit of this, or why is it important?

Imagine… being able to share this information with other users without having to provide all of the various data sources that this information might be coming from… or providing this information to people out in ‘the field’ in a disconnected environment…  The possibilities are endless.

So, if you’re looking for a break from the Olympics (personally, I can’t get enough!)… Take some time and explore Autodesk Design Review, and Geospatial DWFs.

Until next time
Take care.

Warren