The ESRI Shapefile is a common exchange format with GIS systems and users often receive .SHP files representing contours. However, most of the time the elevation data is not stored on the shapefile geometry, instead it’s a column in the associated .DBF file. This typically leads to multiple steps having to import then do processes to read the attached data to elevate them properly, so why not do it all in one step.
The process of importing contours from shapefiles is actually a two step process, since the results from Autodesk’s MAPIMPORT command does not elevate the resulting polylines. This is a step-by-step procedure on how to take a shapefile of contours to elevated polylines in AutoCAD (Map/Civil3D).
Sometimes things that should be simple turn out to be (at best) difficult to do in CAD engines. For example the need to draw text along linear objects such as lines, arcs, polylines, etc. Long street names are a good example, if there isn’t a long straight segment for a regular (but rotated) text, what’s left to do.
Most users won’t hit this limit and shouldn’t worry about it until they do. However a handful of our users processing extremely massive surfaces have reported an error message like “System.OutOfMemoryException” and/or “Array dimensions exceeded supported range”.
Legends are a standard inclusion on any civil/survey drawing. A table to describe the graphic symbols and even linetypes are needed. The question is when these table are generated and how. Some users wait until the project is nearly complete then manually draw the tables. Revisions may introduce new symbols that can’t be forgotten. There has to be a better way.
Harvests multiple drawing extents and properties (DWGPROPS), creates output drawings or reports. Export to Google Earth (KML) with preview thumbnail or web ready reports (HTM) and more.
DotSoft is pleased to announce that we have ported our core product line to the IntelliCAD platform. These “inside CAD” products were previously only available on other CAD engines but now run inside IntelliCAD 9.0, 8.4 (or updated 8.3) builds. These ports include:
In the early days of AutoCAD, users could safely use a NODe osnap to snap to a point block while zoomed out because they knew it would only return the actual intended point of the insert. Then along came an improvement that had AutoCAD return the insertion point of the attributes. With that improvement meant you had constantly zoom in to make sure you were getting the right point.
For those that aren’t aware, the OSNAPNODELEGACY set to 1 causes the CAD engine restore the logical NODe osnap of the point object only. Now in the highly unlikely case you want to snap to attributes, you can use the INSert osnap.
This tool transforms coordinates using three known points on two systems using Affine, Helmert or Sixparm transforms. Most users will find the LINES definition method is easiest, as in the example below where we have drawn 3 LINE objects (shown in cyan dashed lines).
Map users often want to insert user blocks into the drawing from files containing latitude and longitude values. This tool does just that, places inserts into the drawing at projected locations from files containing lat/long values.