Another new tool is not really new at all, but a redesign of an existing powerful system. AutoCAD Utility Design has been released, and it’s the new implementation of the former Autodesk Utility Design. The name change to AutoCAD represents the movement towards a powerful standards-driven tool built within the powerful design and documentation environment of AutoCAD.

AutoCAD Utility Design is built on the AutoCAD  and AutoCAD Map 3D technologies. It combines template and workflow-based design tools with GIS to create in intelligent 3D connected network model for the electric utility industry. Autodesk added easy-to-use templates and workflow tools built on a powerful rules base to create consistent designs based on engineering standards. AutoCAD Utility Design includes engineering reports and documentation as a by-product of the design, rather than having to go back through the design to pull data and manually compile common reports. It includes engineering tools for calculating voltage drop, cable tensioning, sag, pole sizing, guying and others. The model is also designed to allow integration with existing supply, EAM, and other enterprise systems.

In a former life at an electric utility, I helped implement Autodesk Utility Design and did some planning for integration with the GIS and Asset Management Systems. I also had the chance to do some trials with Project Galileo while it was in the Autodesk Labs. I’m pretty excited for these new releases and am looking forward to working with these.

Thanks to Google Maps, Sketchup, and other visualization tools, there is a stronger interest in seeing things from a 3D and realistic perspective than ever before. There’s a new tool for AutoCAD Map 3D that shows some interesting promise for GIS users. Think of the streetview from Google Maps, and now incorporate that kind of view interactively into your GIS applications. Earthmine combines a new collection process collecting stereo photos as well as point cloud information to create a 3D photographic view of an area. Now take that view, and integrate it with your geospatial data in AutoCAD Map 3D.  You get to see the photo model, with your data right in the model.

I see some exciting applications for asset management – municipalities, utilities and campuses, as well as land developers.

So while you “look” around the street, your data shows up in real locations. So you can see the streetview with your valve or manhole location where it might not otherwise be visible in the photograph.

Or get an idea of the subsurface utilities under the street while looking at the model.

It’s a major step forward in the technology. The data itself is coming from Earthmine servers that either you can host, or have Earthmine host. It appears that you can license model information from their partners, or create your own photo models. Imagine making a 3D view of your new development or campus with your geospatial data superimposed. It brings to mind a number of possibilities. Aside from the tools for viewing the data in AutoCAD Map 3D, Earthmine also has a mobile 3D mapping system so you can have your own photo car to drive around (or pedal). I’m pretty excited to see how this technology advances in the coming months and years. I’m looking forward to getting a closer view of this new tool.

Geoworld magazine published an article this month from Liam Speden, the business line manager for Autodesk’s infrastructure planning and conceptual-design solutions. The article is called “Are You Ready for BIM?”

I’ve been avoiding the topic myself as the phrase has become a bandwagon topic. A lot of people are talking about it, but far fewer understand what it means, and so that water gets pretty murky. Now that the subject is going mainstream in the geo industry, it’s time to start clarifying. BIM means a lot of things to different people. I hear some folks talk about it as a type of software, using BIM software where they would have said CAD software in the past. In reality, it’s somewhat more than that. It’s more of a process, or methodology – a paradigm. It’s also a standard defined by the National Institute of Building Sciences.  More and more owner organizations, particularly government,  are requiring designs that comply with these standards, such as GSA, Corps of Engineers, and recently the US Air Force.

Wikipedia describes it as “the process of generating and managing building data during its life cycle[1]. BIM involves representing a design as objects – vague and undefined, generic or product-specific, solid shapes or void-space oriented (like the shape of a room), that carry their geometry, relations and attributes. BIM design tools allow for extracting different views from a building model for drawing production and other uses. These different views are automatically consistent – in the sense that the objects are all of a consistent size, location, specification – since each object instance is defined only once, just as in reality.” 

Of course, Autodesk has embraced the concept with it’s vertical construction products as well as Civil 3D for horizontal design. Autodesk has numerous resources of information available on the subject, starting with their BIM page. 

So, what does all this have to do with GIS and geospatial technology? Well, more and more often, the geo technologies will be required to integrate. While there are many similarities, there are some differences that will interfere with a smooth transition in much the same way as the CAD to GIS (or in reality Design to As-Built) continues to plague organizations. It is important for geo professionals to understand this technology. I’ll be exploring the relationships and integrations in the comingposts. Stay tuned and join me in the expedition.

Aside from the Suites, there are some great new tools included in the new products. Even the Autodesk basic platform product, AutoCAD, has some great new features. But I’ll let my coworkers talk about those – my goal is to share some of the great new solutions included in the new 2012 release of AutoCAD Map 3D. I won’t try to cover them all now, but will share items that stand out and add new notes as I explore the new tools with you.

The first thing is that now the Autodesk Topobase functionality is now included with Map 3D.  Topobase was a very powerful infrastructure management software built on AutoCAD Map 3D. It brings specific industry-oriented data models for a number of areas, such as electric distribution, water and wastewater systems and land. In addition, the ability to add business rules to object editing, more advanced topology capability and reporting tools have made Topobase a very important application for utilities and municipalities. I’ll be adding more about this functionality as time goes on.

Right off, the geographic coordinate system is different. There are new transformation algorithms and creating your own is now much easier.

For the common typical user of Map 3D today, the feature data connectors are key pieces of the interoperability puzzle. One of the immediate new items is the new stylization tools. In the past, you can connect to a geospatial dataset through FDO (the Data button on the Display Manager), and create line and symbol styles based on AutoCAD blocks and Map linetypes. These linetypes were different than the AutoCAD line types stored in the ACAD.LIN style. This was a bit of a challenge for some users who had standardized linetypes based on the standard AutoCAD linetype sets.

We could create composite linetypes and stack line components to get some pretty complex and interesting line (I used to make the typical map-style roadway with a dashed yellow line stacked on thicker black and red lines to “look” like a road).

We can still do that, but now we can use standard AutoCAD linetypes (or any custom linetypes we store in our @.LIN files), as well as blocks, text (MText objects), and dynamic text right from the data. And the style tools give more advanced placement options.

So instead of using labels to put a street name, we could make the street name part of the linetype.

A couple of other items to mention – the FDO connectors now include ESRI Personal and File Geodatabases, as well as ArcSDE 10.x geodatabases, and new capability for relational databases. I’ll add more on that pretty soon.

What difference does this make to the GIS user? Well many of the datasets we use rely on ODBC to make the data available to our software. AutoCAD Map 3D used these ODBC drivers to access data through FDO as well as Map data links (link templates). In 32-bit versions of AutoCAD Map 3D, we can drag an Access (Jet) database or Excel file onto the Map Explorer and have it become a Data Source that I can view the data or use it to link to AutoCAD objects. Users who have moved to 64 bit systems (such as myself), could no longer do this. We also couldn’t use the FDO connectors to connect to many of our databases, as they were based on ODBC drivers as well. Microsoft released new drivers, and this made FDO connectors available, but the link templates were still unavailable. That’s because the Link Templates rely on ODBC as well. AutoCAD Map has calls to the Microsoft Jet drivers to make the drag and drop possible. The problem is that Microsoft never released a 64-bit Jet driver (at least in name). Instead they have released the Office Access Connectivity Engine (ACE). The new drivers for ACE were available after the Map release so it wasn’t part of the 2011 release.

The good news is that you can load those drivers and use your Link Templates again. You can’t drag and drop, but you can manually create the links. You’ll have to manually establish the data set through ODBC, and then you can connect to the data in Map 3D. The Autodesk Map 3D support team has a blog with a link to the drivers, instructions, and a video on manually setting up the ODBC connection and connecting in Map.

Keep in mind, Microsoft has set the default install for Office to be 32-bit, so you need to make sure you select the 64-bit version to get the new drivers. When I first installed Office 2010, I accepted the defaults assuming it would load the 64-bit version. As I found out, with the 32-bit version of Office installed, you can’t install the drivers. In that case, you’ll need to uninstall the 32-bit version, and reinstall the 64-bit version of Office (or the drivers). I understand you can load the 64 bit drivers, and then reinstall your 32-bit version of Office (2010 or previous version) – I haven’t tried it since I have made the jump to Office 2010. Let me know how it goes if you try it.

Start with a new drawing, assign the coordinate system and create a connection to the data set to label.

Add the data to the map, and the dataset will show up in my Display Manager.

Once the data connection established, create a style and hit the feature label option. This will open the Style Label dialog box where all the settings are to get the labels to look the way you want.

Going down the dialog box, set the Multiline Option (the Advanced Placement option will set the text to follow the line, which you may want for certain conditions, but the text can end up in separate text entities for every letter – that may be ok – it depends on what you are looking for).

The next item is to identify what property (attribute item) you want to use for your label. If you have an attribute that is exactly what you want, you can set it and be done. In some cases, you may want to modify the value or even combine several elements of the text. To add pipe sizes, take the size and add an inch symbol (the double quote) – so an 8” line will read 8”. You could add material so the label reads 12” PVC, or if doing street names, you might want to combine the street number, direction, name and type to get a complete street name. To modify this, select expression here. This will open the Map Expression Builder dialog box.

There are a lot of options for creating text labels from data, calculations, or other elements. In this case, I want to place some text elements together. The function to combine text is concatenate, which I can find under the text functions under Concat.

Selecting the function places the text and format in the expression window. The function works on the elements contained in the following parenthesis, and the bracketed text property are place holders for the text elements. To get the pipe size and combine it with an inch symbol, replace the first Text Property with the value for the size, and the second with the “ symbol (surrounded by single quotes to show it’s a text value – ‘”’). You can continue to add pieces of text until you get the desired label. To add attribute values, such as the size, use the Property menu and the list of attributes will be there sorted by the type of field. I’ll select the size, and complete the expression – Concat ( SIZE , ‘”‘ ). For street names, an expression might be concat( ST_DIR, “ “, ST_NAME, “ “, ST_TYPE) where the “ “ is used to add spaces between the fields.

You can use any combination of data fields and other elements to create a label with this expression process.

Once the expression is set, you can set the display parameters such as size, color and font. Remember with the size, Map Space is scale relative to the model and set the height to a specific value, while device space is relative to the monitor, or view, and will change the physical height based on the zoom scale.

Once the labels are set how we want them, we can go to the Display Manager and select Save Current Map to DWG from the Tools menu.

After saving to a new drawing file, we can open the file and the labels are now standard AutoCAD text items along with the roads. The process actually takes more to write about than to actually do.

Next post, I’ll go the other direction. I’ll show how to grab labels and turn them into attributes.

Data Structure Paradigm
CAD is used for all types of drawing. The CAD drawing file is essentially an object-oriented database which stores objects sequentially (essentially as they’re drawn). Each row of data will represent an individual CAD primitive object.  The structure of the data and the number of elements is dependent upon the type of primitive. For example, a point is going to carry a single coordinate pair (X,Y) for its location while a line will store two coordinate pairs – a start point and an end point.  A curve will have a start point, an end point, and a bulge (or curve) factor. Along with that, there are additional data elements describing the color, line type, layer and other properties.

An ESRI GIS dataset, whether it is a shape file, geodatabase or personal geodatabase organizes the data into more formal structures, in the form of tables (this is simplified to a conceptual level – each of these data formats include several files or tables to complete the dataset, but are not really germane to the discussion). Different primitives, such as points, lines and polygons can’t reside in the same set of tables. In addition, the number of data elements in each row will be consistent with the dataset. Points representing valves will be in a different table than the lines representing the pipes they’re attached to. The tables will be divided based on some set of business rules to organize the data. In the ESRI terminology, this is essentially a Feature Class. For example, water, storm and sanitary sewer lines may all be in one table, or they may be divided into 3 or more tables. The division may be due to organization, or due to the different information needed for each group. Many times within each Feature Class, there will be a further subdivision of objects, such as high-voltage conductor and low-voltage conductor, called a Subclass. Typically the subclass will be the level of organization used to symbolize the objects. The result is a very structured organization of data.

The analogy that I typically use, and it seems to fit, is that the data sets are like a collection of coins. My AutoCAD file is like a pile of change and my ESRI data file is like the same group of coins all organized into paper tubes.

The take away from all of this is that an AutoCAD drawing will store multiple data types in a single drawing file, while the ESRI data sets will store multiple data types in multiple tables (and/or files). This is a critical point to managing interoperability.

Graphic Representation
The other major area of difference is with the graphic representation. The AutoCAD drawing includes information regarding the appearance of the objects. For example, a line will include the color, line type, and thickness. Each of these properties is inherent in the primitive object. These properties define how AutoCAD will display the file. If I pass the file to someone else, and they open it, it will look the same.
ESRI datasets are a different case. The datasets are not related to the appearance of the data. The appearance is left up to the application at the time of display. ArcGIS, for example, stores the appearance of a map in a Map document, which contains pointers to the data, describing what data to select (allowing a subset of the data through a query) and how to display it. It is the map document that contains the symbolization information, such as linetype, color and stylization.

The Result
These two differences present the primary difference to interoperability. Neither one nor the other is inherently better – they have different ways of achieving similar results.   The data organization presents some challenges when bringing CAD data into GIS tools, for example, when reading an AutoCAD DWG file in ArcGIS, it reads the data as if it were ESRI datasets, and groups objects by their primitive forms, such as lines. That’s different than the way CAD users think of and manage the data. Additionally, CAD drawings typically contain information that doesn’t fit into the GIS data model. The separation of the data from the symbolization is what allows GIS systems to display the same information is many ways depending on the view or analysis needed. This also makes it a little more difficult when transferring data between systems. There is no direct method within AutoCAD to read the Map document to get the shortcuts and symbolization and replicate an ArcGIS map without recreating the symbolization. In most cases this is not really an issue because the data is the important part, although it can be problematic when you want to reproduce the entire map.
There are some other differences between systems that are important to be aware of, such as shape files not dealing with arcs (causing arcs to be broken into many small lines), and single or double precision data differences. These are important to be aware of, but not as critical to the basic interoperability of the systems.

One of the reasons I like working with Autodesk’s AutoCAD Map 3D  product is that it provides me with both worlds. It is an AutoCAD drawing, and with the Feature Data Objects connectors, I can work with the ESRI datasets natively without having to make any changes in the way I work with these disparate data types.

In most cases, there are business issues that interfere with interoperability that have a much greater impact than these technical software elements. I’ll explore those in a future blog.

CADsoft Consulting’s CAD Camp 2009 is well underway.  We had a very successful Architectural/BIM day yesterday, and the Civil day is in full swing. Tomorrow will be the Geospatial Day (so it doesn’t interfere with any GIS Day activities). This morning we’ve had a presentation from Autodesk’s Civil 3D maven, Lucy Kuhns, and our own Ron Coulliard is doing a workshop on grading as I type. During Lucy’s presentation, I was asked about local Arizona GIS data, so I promides to share some of the sites I use/am aware of. The list is by no means exhaustive, and there’s some dupplication within the sites, but here you go anyway. I’ll continue to identify sites I run across in the future. If you’ve got some good ones you want to share, add them to the comments or email to me and I’ll add them to the list.

GIS Data Sites for Arizona

Arizona State Cartographer’s Office 
They maintain the Arizona GeoServer, with aerial photos and statewide features served through web mapping services (WMS) and web feature services (WFS). They also maintin links to other data sources throughout the state

The AGIC (Arizona Geographic Information Council) GeoData Portal
AGIC is a state sponsored group working with GIS across the state. They sponsor an annual GIS educational conference every year. We just finished the 2009 conference in Tucson. There was great attendance. I presented 3 hands on worksops this year.  They have County boundaries, tribal boundaries, cities, wilderness areas, political boundaries, voting districts, school districts, census information, environmental and natural resource data, interstates and roads

US Fish and Wildlife
USFW maintains larger scale data sets covering National Wetlands Inventory and area boundaries

U of A Library
The U of A Libraries maintains the Arizona Electronic Atlas and the Arizona Regional Image Archive (ARIA) as well as links to other data sites

ASU
The ASU Libraries also has spatial data and links available

ADEQ
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has water quality data, surface, drinking and groundwater

Local division sites

Maricopa County
The County Assessor’s Office GIS Department maintains data for the county including parcels, detailed topographic data, floodplains, and survey network.

Pima County
Pima County is really one of the long runners in GIS. They have had data available for as long as anyone in the state. They maintain over 273 data layers in ESRI shape files as well as landbase section maps in AutoCAD format.

City of Phoenix
Phoenix has an extensive collection of GIS data.  They have Engineering Quarter-Section maps in DXF format CAD files

Nationally-based sites

US Forest Service

FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains flood hazard data sets which are available as GIS data sets or through a Web Mapping Service (WMS) 

NSGIC
The National States Geographic Information Council maintains an inventory of data and its currency in the Ramona GIS Inventory. Arizona’s page is here:

Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
The NRCS maintains the Soil Data Mart with soil data available by state. They also collect other data such as water supply and snowpack

United States Geological Servey (USGS)
The USGS maintains large scale data sets for the US. They have digitial orthoquads and photos, land cover, elevation model and other data sets.

US Census Bureau
The Census maintains census and popluation data for the US

United States Department of Agriculture

USDA has Forest Coverage

Geography Network
The Geography Network maintains various spatial data sets for the US

ESRI Geoportal Extension
ESRI has a beta site with downloadable GIS data

National Center for Atmospheric Research
Atmospheric data for the US

New Mexico

Lucy Kuhns mentioned the New Mexico Resource GIS program site. Here’s the link:
http://rgis.unm.edu/

I’m going to make several blogs here in a series of the issues and some methods to make the process easier. This first post, I’m going to discuss the a bit about the similarities in the technologies. Following that, I’ll be posting on the differences, barriers, myths, and other issues involved.

Both AutoCAD and ESRI are built on basic primitive elements that are combined to create representations of real objects. Both systems include:

Points - a representation of a single location. It could represent a physical object such as a pole, manhole or brass cap in the ground, or it could be a non-physical point, such as a crime scene location or the corner of a property line. In any case, the systems both record a coordinate consisting of an X and a Y and possible a Z (if elevations are being included). The X and Y value could represent any projection or coordinate system, such as degrees of latitude and longitude or northings and eastings from a state plane.

Lines – a representation of of a connected set of coordinate pairs. Every line is going to have a start point defined by X, Y and/or Z, and and end point defined by an X, Y and/or Z. It could represent the centerline of a road, the edge of a building, or a buried pipe.

The line may be defined the system by coordinate pairs, such as point A and point B, or it could have the actual coordinate values in the line definition, such as this example from AutoCAD (a listing of a line – the start point is the set of parenthesis with the 10 X Y Z, and the end point is 11 X Y Z):

In some cases, for example, ESRI, the actual coordinates of the line are stored within an object “envelope”, which is a rectagle enclosing the object.

 Polygons – a representation of an area. It could be a representation of a parcel, a building footprint, or an animal migratory zone. It is defined by lines and so by a series of bounding coordinates. Generally, in vector systems (save that discussion for another time), polygons are defined by their boundaries. They could be defined by groups of lines, or it could have the coordinate values built into the definition, simlar to the lines (as shown above).

In ESRI, the coordinate pairs are contained in an envelope bounding the entire object:

Attributes -  data associated with an object. Associated data could be an identification number, a name, a description of the object, the color, size, diameter, etc. This is what turns a simple point, line or polygon into a representation of a fire hydrant, electric line or county. Attributes may be stored and linked to the object in a myriad of methods. It could be based on a common identifier stored in the object definition and the attribute list, as in a primary-foreign key relationship, or the definition of the object may be created to include certain atribute sets intrinsically. In some cases there may be a mixture of methods. For example, in AutoCAD, objects have intrinsic attributes (such as blocks attributes), extended entity data (attribute values associted to an individual object), or object data (data tables stored internally in the drawing and linked to objects). Additionally, both systems include methods to link objects to externally associated databases to extens the attributes of an object.

Understanding these similarities is key to understanding how to integrate these two systems. The next post, I’ll discuss the primary differences between the two.