Exporting Engineering Data to GIS

AutoCAD® Civil 3D® has made it easy for us this year when we want to take our engineering data and transform it into something we can use in our Geographic Information Systems. What used to take a lot of time or some form of third party software can now be handled inside of Autodesk’s civil solution very easily and with no time at all. We will take a look at this function and see how the data is sent from a Civil 3D atmosphere into its GIS form.

In the picture above we are looking at the completed model of a subdivision. Now, this infrastructure is in place and will most likely be maintained by some sort of Municipality or County government. Sometimes you may be the Government entity, or you are being asked to provide the data by the local powers that be. This data needs to be recorded and put into the GIS system in order to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to any maintenance or repair work that the infrastructure may need in the future.

Highlighted in the picture above you will see the option that has greatly simplified this for us. Once the button is pressed we will be asked a series of important questions, for example like what coordinate system the SDF adheres to.

After we chose the coordinate system the SDF file is produced. We will take a look at the SDF now to see what data came in with this export tool. I will now be switching to the AutoCAD® Map 3D software so I can use the geospatial format that was exported.

Now that Map 3D has been opened we will use our data tools to connect to the SDF of the subdivision that Civil 3D created.

Now that Map 3D is up and running I will choose to connect to a data source and then navigate to my SDF to make the connection.

Once the connection has been made you will be able to see the data that was created in a list of items we can pull from the SDF file, for example, Alignments and Parcels. Once we choose what features to bring in we simply choose to add them to the Map and they are ready to go.

Now, not only is the data easy to generate, it is very accurate and detailed because all of the information was actually derived from the design. This makes for very accurate and useable GIS data, and also cuts down a lot of time technicians would normally use to convert all of this information.

Autodesk’s Civil and Mapping solutions continue to provide our community with ways and techniques to cut down time spent on tasks that feel they should be easier, and to improve our efficiency greatly.