IMAGINiT Geospatial Solutions Blog

AutoCAD Map 3D – Generating Contours from DEMs

AutoCAD Map 3D has a great function included that can generate contours from a DEM.   Simply right Clicking on a DEM layer in the Display Manger you will see a command to 'Create Contour layer’.  The resulting contour layer will be a new SDF file.

This command will bring up a dialog box that allows you to specify the parameters of the Contour Layer:  the Layer name for the Display Manager, the contour major and minor intervals, and the resulting SDF file location.

Once the Contours are generated, one would expect to be able to use the Data Table to view the individual contours and related data.  Well, one would be wrong…  as there seems to be an ‘undocumented feature’ (re: bug) where the data table does NOT display the contour data.

As you can see from this screen capture, only a single record is displayed in the Data Table.

To be able to see all of the contour records, you need to drill-down into the Feature Class and select the Contour Class:

Once you choose the Contour Class you will then see all of the records displayed in the Data Table:

*** NOTE ***
There is one caveat to this…  Even though you can ‘see’ the records, you can ‘zoom to a contour’ by selecting the record in the Data Table, or ‘zoom to the record’ by selecting a contour in the map.

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

GeoAlberta 2010 – Day 2

Well, as I said yesterday, I had a morning flight today which was going to prevent me from taking in most of the sessions today.  I did however manage to take in Jonathan Mark’s presentation titled: VanMap and the Olympics. Jonathan is the GIS Manager for the City of Vancouver and his presentation today focused on the web mapping application that was developed specifically for the Olympics.  Jonathan discussed how Host City VanMap site was limited in scope and did not go outside of the Vancouver city boundary, and provided a limited set of purpose built maps.  The City of Vancouver has an extensive investment in the Autodesk MapGuide 6.x platform, but this was the cities first major application built on the new Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise framework.  Initially there were concerns regarding the cities lack of experience with the new framework, and also concerns about performance.  This concern about site performance turned out to be a non-issue as the site performed very well.  Jonathan provided some statistics on peak traffic, and noted that they found it interesting that the site visits peaked in the week leading up to the Olympics, and actually decreased during the Olympics.  Jonathan also briefly discussed the the City of Vancouver’s Open Data initiative, and gave some insight into the Terms of Service of using the cities data.  All-in-all a very good presentation.

Other notes from the Conference:
Stantec consulting was showing off some new 3D Scanning technology that they have added to their service offerings, and Kevin Grover was nice to enough to provide me with some sample scanned data of the interior of the conference center.  I wanted some different samples, and file formats to see how the data works with the Point Cloud functionality of core AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Map.

That’s all for now as I make my way to the airport to head to Winnipeg.

Until next time,
Take Care

Warren M

GeoTec 2010

Travel day today as I’m heading to Toronto to attend the GeoTec 2010 Conference, one of Canada’s premier geospatial technology conferences. 

This years theme is “Increasing Productivity, Potential and Profits” and the conference will attempt to address current and significant issues facing the geospatial community.

Now in its 24th year, the 2010 event continues the tradition of offering an exceptional program focusing on the latest trends in technology and applications.

GeoTec caters to a wide audience of business experts, senior academics and technology specialists. We consistently develop a program that addresses the concerns of all users of GIS, imagery and geospatial data.

I will be presenting this year during the Tuesday afternoon session on Interoperability: Data Considerations.  My presentation will focus on identifying challenges and solutions to improving collaboration between GIS and Engineering departments.  During the presentation I will show how AutoCAD Map 3D and Autodesk MapGuide can be used to easily access, and share data residing in an ArcSDE data warehouse.

The goal of my presentation is to hopefully demonstrate some options that could be employed to break down some of the barriers that are present in many organizations between GIS and Engineering departments.

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 – FDO Performance Enhancements

WOW!

I’m not sure what else to say!

Well, let me start by backing up a bit…

I finally decided this afternoon I was going to install AutoCAD Map 3D 2011.  Even though this was just released, I have been debating this for some time now, and wasn’t sure how I was going to proceed.  You see, some of the other techs within IMAGINiT have been making the jump to Windows 7 AND 64bit, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for this.  Don’t get me wrong, I love being on the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology and would like nothing more than to move to an a new OS and one that will support more memory.  But unfortunately, there are just too many unknowns, and known issues, like lack of ODBC support on 64bit, for me to be comfortable in making this move.  Long story, not-so short, I decided I was not ready to take this leap.

So, no need to wait…  I might as well get that latest release of AutoCAD Map 3D installed on my production machine ASAP.

While it’s no secret that there are not many ‘new features’ to boast about this time around, one of the enhancements being talked up is the improvements in caching and updates to the FDO Providers.

We are currently working on migrating a clients VBA application, and one of the new features of this application will be accessing cadastral base information stored in a SQL Server Spatial database.  The performance in AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 wasn’t what I would have considered as ‘production ready’, so I was specifically interested in seeing some improvements to the SQL Server Spatial Provider.

Well, now with 2011 installed, the first thing I wanted to check out was connecting to, and querying, some data from SQL Server.  There are a couple of things I noticed soon after executing some test queries;  first off, the layers appear IMMEDIATELY in the Display Manager, secondly, the queries were substantially quicker, and thirdly, the caching seems to be happening transparently and a person could continue to work as the data is being cached and displayed on the screen.

The dataset consists of:

• Cadastral base data (NAD 83 CSRS, Zone 13) for the province of Saskatchewan
• Data stored in a Foreign Schema in SQL Server

My test scenario included:

• Querying a single Township
• Querying an additional 13 themes (layers) of data within this Township

I wouldn’t consider this an official benchmark test of any sort, but it is a sufficient enough test to prove whether or not there are any substantial differences in the overall query/caching time.  In this first test, of the 13 feature layers being queried, only 3 layers actually contain features within this township, and there are only a total of 153 features.  So this is actually a very small dataset, but yet it took some time to query in…

Test Results:

In AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 it took over 2.5 minutes until the layers were visible in the Display Manager,  and just about another 1.5 minutes until all of the features were visible, for a total query time of just under 4 minutes.

 

The results in AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 were much improved.  As stated earlier, the layers were immediately visible in the Display Manager, and the entire query was completed in just over 1 minute.

 

That’s fairly convincing to show that there is a performance improvement, but I wanted to run this on a little larger dataset as well.  The second test scenario was the same as the first except within a different township that included more data.   This particular township contained over 8800 features coming from 8 feature layers (5 empty).

On this test, in 2010 the total running time was about 5:45, and in 2011, the total running time was about 1:45.

While I believe there is still definitely plenty of room for improvement, it is easy to see that there is a major performance improvement with respect to the SQL Server FDO Provider in AutoCAD Map 3D 2011.

Now…  Having said all of that, I’m sure there are some people questioning the fact that it took ‘just over a minute’ to query in 153 features.  That is true, BUT, it was querying 13 different themes to get this data, and I feel it is important not to get ‘hung-up’ on the amount of time particular query takes to execute.  We need to ensure that we are comparing apples-to-apples, and oranges-to-oranges…  IOW, we cannot (or should not) look at this and say,

“Gee, it only takes me a couple seconds to open a drawing with that same data in it, why would I want to have this information stored in a database and have it take a minute to execute the query?”

Why?  Because we need to look past the immediate gratification of a ‘drawing opening fast’, and realize that there are many other benefits to an organization as a result of having the data located in a central repository.  Having the data accessible to the entire organization opens up unlimited opportunities for data consumption from a wide variety of applications, clients, and people.  In most situations these benefits would far outweigh the inconvenience of a executing a query that takes an extra minute to run.

Stepping off my soap-box now…

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 – Workflow Enhancements

I stated last year, that the Workflow Designer that was introduced in AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 was probably one of the most exciting features I had seen in a long time.  Albeit, this initial release was somewhat limited in it’s capabilities, the foundation was set for an extremely powerful tool for end users. 

True to their word, Autodesk has added a lot of functionality to this tool with the addition of a ton of new activities.  This is going to be EXTREMELY powerful.

This workflow functionality in AutoCAD Map 3D is actually being driven through something called Windows Workflow Foundation.  The Workflow Foundation is defined as:

A programming model, in-process workflow engine and designer to implement long-running processes as workflows within .NET applications

This means that the core engine behind this tool is actually part of Windows and is not specific to Autodesk.

Well, what exactly is a ‘workflow’ you ask?

Essentially, a workflow can make it easier to automate repetitive tasks.

More specifically, a workflows is a repeatable process that can be encapsulated into re-useable, shareable, format.  The Workflow Designer in AutoCAD Map 3D could be considered a sort of ‘macro recorder’, where you can define your workflow process in a user friendly GUI, and save that workflow.

 

By simply dragging’n’dropping different Actions and specifying the action parameters, a user can automate repetitive tasks in mere minutes.  Anybody that has done any sort of customization, development, or automation scripting will quickly see the benefits of this tool.

The new Workflow tasks enable you to:

• Connect to more vector data sources―not just SDF or SHP files.
• Change and save feature layer styles, and run analysis such as buffering or spatial overlays.
• Execute ANY AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map 3D, and AutoCAD® Raster Design commands.
• Even execute in-house LISP routines or custom applications.

The resulting workflow is nothing more than an XML representation of the series of commands/processes defined in the workflow.  Workflows can be shared, inside or outside your organization, making it easier to standardize the way in which tasks are performed.  This should help maintain more consistency and in turn, hopefully, fewer errors. It will also mean that users can spend less time doing tedious, repetitive tasks, and new staff can become more productive in less time, and with far less effort.

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

Working with MapInfo data from AutoCAD Map 3D

My colleagues, and good folks from down under, have identified that they have a requirement to be able to integrate and work more efficiently with MapInfo data.  It seems MapInfo is a widely used data format in many organizations throughout Australia.

Now, AutoCAD Map has long been able to Import and Export MapInfo mif/mid files, and in recent versions, .tab files.  But, besides the fact that we are creating a new silo of data, or another copy of the data, we also know that import and export processes are never 100% complete.

So what are our options then for working with MapInfo data in AutoCAD Map 3D? 
I don’t see an ‘Add MapInfo Connection’ in my AutoCAD Map 3D?

Well, thanks to the FDO Open Source community, there is an open source FDO provider called OGR.  The OGR Provider provides read/write access to dozens of vector formats, including MapInfo.

To implement this functioning in AutoCAD Map (and MapGuide for that matter) you must first download the provider, and then install and configure it for your application: AutoCAD Map 3D, or MapGuide.  The Provider downloads can be found here.  Simply choose the link for the FDO version you are currently using, and download the appropriate provider.

Let’s use my install of AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 as an example:

Download the Windows Binary OGR Provider for the 3.4.1 version of the FDO Providers.  The zip file will contain the OGRProvider.dll file.  Ensure tht AutoCAD Map is not running and move the OGRProvider.dll into the following folder:

C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Map 3D 2010\FDO\bin

Next, the Providers.xml file, in the same folder, needs to be modified by adding the following snippet:

<FeatureProvider>
  <Name>OSGeo.OGR.3.4</Name>
  <DisplayName>OSGeo FDO Provider for OGR </DisplayName>
  <Description>OGR Provider</Description>
  <IsManaged>False</IsManaged>
  <Version>3.4.0.0</Version>
  <FeatureDataObjectsVersion>3.4.0.0</FeatureDataObjectsVersion>
  <LibraryPath>OGRProvider.dll</LibraryPath>
</FeatureProvider>

Restart AutoCAD Map 3D and you should see the new OGR provider listed in the Data Connect window.

Simply provide the path and filename of the MapInfo file you wish to connect to, click Connect:

Then Add To Map.

And you should be off and running…

*** Caveat ***
Updating of files is NOT currently supported.
IOW, files can only be accessed in READ-ONLY mode. 

*** Potential Workaround ***
So, if you need to be able to actually edit the data, one workaround might be to Bulk Copy the data to another FDO Feature Source like: SDF, SHP, etc.

I know, I know, I’m contradicting what I said earlier about avoiding ‘creating data silos’…  Unfortunately, we’re not living in a perfect world… Yet… 

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and if you have any questions or comments on this or other items, don’t hesitate to drop me a note.

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

Hybrid drawings… Mixing FDO and Drawing data

With FDO, and connecting to various data sources, becoming a more viable and real option for organizations, users are starting to create great looking maps and information products using a hybrid of CAD and FDO Feature data.  This is a great way to start getting your feet wet with working with Feature Data, but still being able to maintain and use your good ‘ol CAD data.

A few clients have now brought up some of the issues that they are running into when trying to work in this hybrid environment and are looking for solutions or workarounds.

One problem that has long been a problem in AutoCAD is draw order: arranging and maintaining the stacking order of layers, or objects, has been a hit’n’miss situation for as long as I’ve been using AutoCAD.  The Draw Order command has been in AutoCAD for quite some time now, but even it does not provide a good user experience.

FDO, and the Display Manager, have gone a long way to addressing these issues, and layers in the Display Manager can be simply dragged’n’dropped to control the draw order, or stacking, of layer.  

But what happens when you have a mix of FDO Feature data and CAD data?

For those that are not aware, in a hybrid drawing of Feature and CAD data, all of the CAD data is grouped under the Map Base layer in the Display Manager, and draw order becomes even more of a problem in this hybrid environment.

But, don’t fret!  There is a solution…

Were you aware that your CAD objects can be stylized similar to how FDO Features are stylized? Well, maybe not ‘exactly’ like stylizing FDO, but there are some very powerful CAD object stylization tools built into the Display Manager. 

Under the same Data button used for connecting to FDO sources, there is an ‘Add Drawing Data’ submenu which provides the ability to add drawing based (CAD) data to the Display Manager where more stylization options are available.

There are many options available for acquiring the drawing data, but I’m going to show how to add a layer of data. 

Simply choose: Add Drawing data > Drawing Layer… and a dialog will appear which allows you to select a single, or multiple, layers to be included in this Display Manager layer.  In my example I have chosen a layer called SEWER_PIPES (lines), and the result is a new layer in the Display Manager.  At this point the layer can be turned On/Off via the layer toggle, but the power is in the stylization options.

The advanced style options are available when you right click on the layer within the Display manager.  You can add a simple Entity style which will allow you to control the color, lineweight, etc, all completely independent of the AutoCAD Layer properties! AND, themes are also extremely easy to create using associated data.

Until next time,
Take care,

Warren M

AutoCAD Map 3D Rubbersheeting

On a recent client visit I was asked  the following:

We sometimes receive parcel developments from external contractors, and many times this data is not properly georeferenced, and possibly not even scaled or rotated properly.  How can we get this data into our master parcel map without having to manually move/rotate/scale the data, or even possibly having to re-draw it?

This is not an un-common situation, and actually, this client had already seen a solution in a previous Map demo from my friend at Autodesk, Mike Schlosser, but couldn’t remember what the solution was.  So I cannot take full credit this, I just simply refreshed the client on how to do this.  Right Jason?  (just seeing of you’re reading this…)

The solution to this problem is the AutoCAD Map Rubber Sheet command, which is in AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 is located on the Feature Map tab and Map Edit panel in the Task-based Ribbon Workspace

Now, many people might be familiar with the rubber sheeting concept for raster based data, but the AutoCAD Map rubber sheet command allows you to rubber sheet vector data!  The basic process of rubber sheeting is selecting matched pairs of points: picking source pts on the objects you want to rubber sheet (Base Point), and then picking the corresponding destination points on the object you’re trying to rubber sheet to (Reference Point).

Here is an example.  Below we can see there are some parcels on the left view, and on the right side is where those parcels need to fit.  As I said earlier, this could be accomplished by manually moving, rotating and scaling the objects, but a simpler method is to simply rubber sheet the data.

Start the Rubber Sheet command and start selecting the matched point pairs.  In general, it is good practice to select point ‘around’ the objects in a clockwise, or counter-clockwise fashion, as opposed to just picking points ‘randomly’ around the objects.  Be sure to use Object Snaps to make accurate point picks, and a minimum of 3 points must be picked for the Rubber Sheet command to work.

When you finished selecting all of the Base/Reference points that you want to use, hit enter, and AutoCAD Map will prompt you to specify ‘what’ you want to rubber sheet: an area, or selected objects.

In this scenario, I want to rubber sheet the objects to fit into this parcel, so I will chose Select.  The result is the object are moved, rotated, scaled, stretched to fit into the area.

What about this ‘Transform’ command I see in AutoCAD Map?

There is another command in AutoCAD Map called Transform, which is similar, but it only prompts you for 2 points and simply moves, rotates, and scales objects based on the 2 selected source and destination points.  Whereas the Rubber Sheet command gives you finer control by being able to select many points, and it can actually ‘skew’ data to fit.

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

Using ESRI Contours from a SHP file to Create a Surface… AutoCAD Map 3D style…

My ‘civil minded’ colleagues over on the IMAGINiT Civil Blog, have recently posted an article about how to create a Civil 3D surface from an ESRI SHP file.  I thought this was a great post, and wanted to expand upon that topic and show how AutoCAD Map 3D can also create a surface, of a different type, from contours that reside in a SHP file.

As the post above explains, in Civil 3D this is a multi step process since CAD objects are required for Civil 3D to be able to create a surface.  So, the first step was Import the SHP file into Civil 3D.  In Map 3D we’re going to be generating a GeoTIFF raster surface, and as such the process is somewhat simpler in that we can simply connect to our data and generate the surface.  Let’s see how.

For this example I’m going to be using the Task-based Ribbon Workspace:

From AutoCAD Map 3D you simply need to connect to your data through the Data Connect window.

  

In the Data Connect window simply choose Add SHP Connection and browse to locate your SHP file with the contour data, click Connect, then Add to Map.

Once the data is connected goto the Feature Map tab and click the 3D Surface button.

Select the + button and choose Connection… and then select the connected layer:

Next you need to:

1. Ensure the elevation (Z) is being read properly.  In the sample shown below, this particular SHP does NOT have the elevation information stored on the geometries…  IOW, this is 2D geometries, however, the elevation information is stored as data
   
   
2. Specify a filename for the resulting GeoTIFF
   
   
3. Specify a name for the resulting layer in the Display Manager
   

The result will be a GeoTIFF raster Surface that can be stylized and themed just like any other FDO data source, as well as slope, aspect analysis.  Here we can see the image stylized using a USGS DEM Palette.

And here we can see the image in a 3D view with a vertical exaggeration of 2x:

Until next time,
Take care

Warren M

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