Importing GIS Data Into AutoCAD Civil 3D

today I'm going to be discussing the procedure to import GIS data into civil 3d I know a lot of people do it but I find that a lot of people aren't doing it properly so on my screen I've got an example of some of the mistakes people make I have four different types of GIS data in this drawing and they've all been imported but they've all been imported wherever they land according to their files as you can see the the line here just I have that there just to make it easier for you to follow where they're all imported at the endpoint of each one of these lines is a is a different file on one endpoint I have some contour data this was imported by a shapefile and if you look at any of these contours no elevations to them I'll talk about how to resolve that later I also have a dgn file MicroStation file that was imported and this has roads and rivers and and so on I also have a raster image file a tiff file of the same County all these are the same County and I have a US map showing the county map it's a county map of the u.s. of all the counties in the US what most people do is they import this data then they move it around scale around up or down however they need to so it can fit properly into their into their drawing however civil3d will do this for you automatically if you just know how to do it so let me show you how to do it let's let's get started here first I'm going to start on your drawing I'm using a straight out-of-the-box civil3d template nothing fancy to it and I'm going to go ahead and switch on over to the planning and analysis workspace aka map 3d okay as most of us know civil 3d is built on top of map 3d so all the map 3d functionality happens to be within civil 3d and my map task pane has already been set to come up matically if yours doesn't come up at the command line its map w-space you can turn it on or turn it off I'll turn it off just so you can see it goes away map w-space turn it on we'll bring it back and I'm primarily going to be focusing on the map Explorer tab so the first thing I'm going to bring in is that the united states county map first thing i'm going to do is assign a coordinate system to my drawing that the county map has to it i found this all this data that I'm using today I found off of a free freely distributed websites that that are out there they they have them for you freely you can pay for some but everything I'm doing today is is found freely so the the county map came from a USGS website and through my research on their website found that the the datum that it uses is lat/long no datum assigned to it so therefore if you look here it's no data i'm latitude longitude degrees negative 180 positive 180 this is the exact code that i need if i need a code i didn't have to search for it i can simply type it in this is the code that i'm going to be using and i'm going to select that and there's where i could have typed in the code i'm going to use that to assign to this drawing so therefore my drawing is now in that coordinate system once i have that i use this map import tool you can type in map import or you can click on this button for those type out there and you're going to want to change your file type to whatever type of file you're going to be bringing in there's all sorts of files here if you could just look through my list here or when you get a chance to do it on your own i'm going to be focusing on a shapefile and this is the county shapefile when they hit OK and if i made a mistake earlier and i didn't assign the correct cortizone i could have some reassign it here so it's not set in stone this button does the exact same thing that i did earlier i'm just a creature of habit and i usually set it first before i go anywhere else so there it is in the lat/long I'm going to assign my drawing my data the cortisone that it was brought in and that happens to be no datum as well so this is the code that came with the file so therefore this shape file has this assigned to it and it will be imported into this drawing which has the same coordinate zone that's just by checks and balances for me this is highly important you want to select on the data option and highlight this activate this this hidden ellipsis button right here I'm going to click on that button and this is going to allow me to assign the attribute data that comes with the shapefile most shape files have object data tables with them so I'm going to use that object data and as you can see the object data table comes with it and it's already embedded in there some have more than one but this was the one that came with this particular shapefile and the object data table is the data that's assigned to the line work or the text or whatever is inside this particular shapefile as you can see I have all sorts of data that I can filter and query into my drawing I'm going to focus primarily on states and counties here in little wall but I need to assign this object data table to my data or else I will not have that ability so make sure you want to make sure you do that when you import the shapefile another important feature I want to point out is this import polygons as closed polylines if you don't do this what happens is all the polylines that are enclosed say circular polylines are or whatever type of shape that are enclosed you will get a region or what it looks like a hatch on your screen and you're limited as to what you can do with that and that's not going to do you any good so in this case I don't want to have a big hatch going across my entire United States I'm going to go ahead and hit OK and I'm going to let it do its thing so it can bring in the shapefile accordingly as you can see at my command line it imported six thousand four hundred eight objects in six seconds so where are they well let's zoom extents and there they are as you can see I've got every single County in the US now I also want to point this out right here this little feature right here I get the phone call a lot on what is it how do I turn it off I can zoom in and out and it doesn't change size you can try to erase it you can try to select it it's not going to go away this happens to be your geo marker to turn it off the command happens to be geo marker visibility what I usually do is I type in geo and hit tab until I see it on my spot on my screen my command line and there it is geo marker visibility hit enter it's basically a 1 or a 0 on or off one is on 0 is off ok I'm going to leave it on for the discussion of this this this webinar here as I as you look down here in my tracking coordinates right here as I move around as I get closer to that geo marker you'll see that I get closer to 0 and as the geo marker actually tells me this is my zero point for my latitude longitude so this is where my shapefile is using as reference okay for what I'm going to be doing I don't need these islands out here I don't need Hawaii I don't need Alaska I just need the United States now that I have this done I'm going to go ahead and do a save on this drawing I'm going to just call it USA okay it's my USA so I'm going to save it and I'm practically done with this drawing for now okay you're going to find that I'm going to be doing several of these open and close drawings and you're going to go why are you doing so many but in the end I bring them all together I promise you this is the proper way to do it it seems a lot of work but I promise you this is the best way okay the next thing I'm going to do is start a brand new drawing and this is the one that I'm going to use to do my text dot importation here okay so I'm going to stay with the map import and I am going to navigate over to my dgn data file change this my files of type to dgn so let me come down here to MicroStation file d GN and there it is now I talked about the metadata so let me explain to you what the metadata looks like here in a little while let me go ahead and bring that up the metadata for the dgn file happens to be right here okay so you when you import and download data off of off of any GIS website you're probably going to be getting a whole bunch of data with it prj files dgn files code files I also have some for the other shapefile that I'm going to be looking at all this data here you don't want to get rid of that that's highly useful information that you're going to need another mistake most people make in this case let me talk about the dgn file is like I only need they go I only need this file so let me just erase everything else but before you erase it you have to understand that these are the files that this file is using to do the GIS importation properly so according to this text dgn file I see that this happens to be a text out file okay and it's nad27 okay so that gives me pretty much what I need here and then I can look at the projection the ellipsoid the datum if you're really going deeper into the GIS world this all makes sense to you so with that being said I am now going to go ahead and import my file the first thing I need to do is assign the coordinates own to my drawing earlier I did it over here but I'm doing it here because I wanted to show you that I can do it over here as well let's go select the coordinate system and I do know the code but I am going to go ahead and and show you that depending on what you're looking at I happen to be in Texas so I'm going to scroll down and find what I need this is text dot 27 the nad27 text out a state plane statewide coroner zones international foot that is the coordinate zone I need so I'm going to go ahead and select that one and again like I said if you know the code you could type it in there okay so I'm going to go ahead and assign that coordinate zone to my drawing as well now you'll see I have a lot of these I actually have sixty three of these 63 being the levels that are inside of the MicroStation file so what I'm going to do is assign one let's go back to Texas and let's go back to the text 27 and say select I will then right-click on this and copy and right click on the heading I'm sorry right-click again and paste to all layers so therefore now all of them are assigned to text 27 you don't want to do this one by one it just doesn't make sense to the data I am going to go ahead and click this button and assign the object data table that comes with this one this one happens to use default 0 and those fields have class in color and so on not really going to use those that much but I will definitely turn them on and then I will right click and use input layer names for table names of copying and I'm sorry then use it there we go sorry it's it's right-click on the data heading and then use important things so therefore they all get assigned the correct default data they need okay before I come down here and talk about the import polyline this is polygons closed polylines again let's talk about the driver options whenever you see this button turned on our the ability to click on it you want to click on it now there's really nothing I found no nothing in here that I need to edit our change it seems to be working fine the way it is but what this does it it activates the importation elements for this particular file and if you just click on it and hit OK there activate it and then turn on the polygons as closed polylines and hit OK now this one takes a little bit it's got a little bit more data roads rivers and so on but this happens to be the the file that I'm going to be using to kind of isolate where I need to be and maybe road design as well so depending on the size of the file will depend on how long it takes to import this the data some are larger of course some are smaller it all depends on where you get it again I got all this far this data this particular file came from the tin wrist website tennis TN RIS and it's free free data that's out there and it's got a you can navigate to that website and and you can download it in all the data that you need for the website for the file is in that website as well so let's give it some time here I know it's almost done because I think it's somewhere in like the 68,000 range yep that's where it was so now that it's it's going through it's updating my drawing and as you can see I have 68,000 objects imported into my drawing zoom extents and let it refresh come on there we go this is my my dgn file so now that I have this and it's assigned to the correct coordinates own for this particular file I'm going to go ahead and save and now I'm going to call this one TC for Travis County because that's where I happened to be dgn data are dgn okay so now I know this is the TC dgn file save that and I'm done with this so I'm going to go an eye to close this one out start a brand new drawing and let's bring in some some contour data actually no let's let's go ahead and bring in some raster data okay Oh actually let me see here yeah I will do the raster data so what I'm going to do is a for the raster data and now I'm not going to use the map import for the raster data I'm going to import an image ok now the image happens to be in a different coordinate zone so this one again I looked at the metadata to bring the coordinate zone and since I do know the code I think you got the point here I'm going to type it in UTM its UTM a 3-1 for F this is the coordinate zone that the raster file came in the image file ok and again that all can be found through the metadata hit OK and I've assigned that coordinate zone to this drawing now I'm going to go in and import the image map I insert make sure you pay close attention to the fact that it's map I insert if you're a type or not map insert ok map I insert so I'm going to use the map image insert and the file that I'm going to be using happens to be this n3 0 w0 973 image file okay and as you can see the coordinates owns that is picking up comes from the the file itself it actually has the zone and everything that it needs in that file okay Valley's insertion point and everything that it comes in so in this particular case I don't have to mess around with any of these settings here now there have been some instances in my time playing with this where I actually had to change the pointed point density insertion point of density the units and changed the the picked up value for my insertion point just so I can get this to work we're playing with it and manipulating it but in this particular case it happens to work just fine because the creation source comes from the image file okay so I hit OK zoom extents and there's my image and again I'm done with this so let's go ahead and save this file and I call this one Travis County image TC image okay and as you can see there's my geo marker right there so therefore it's dead center my image and I know that's correct so I'm done with this the last thing I want to do is the contour data so start a brand new drawing okay and I am going to assign my drawing the same coordinate system that the contour data comes in and that contour data happens to be ll a3 okay that net datum latitude longitude degrees okay so nad83 I'm going to hit OK and my drawing now has a coordinate system I am now going to import use the map import button and I'm going to navigate over first find change my file type to a shapefile navigate over to my Travis County shapefile data and I have spot elevations and I have contour data I'm just going to use the contour data here okay and my contour data I will now go ahead and let's see here I've got the latitude longitude 83 it's already got the cortisone bringing it in from the data file and let's go ahead and assign it the object data this is highly important again because in order for you to get those elevations on these contours this must be assigned to it if you do not assign this object data table which it happens to come with you will see that there is an elevation option in here right there if you do not assign this object data table to these contours your contours will all be rendered with a zero elevation and you will just be upset at the file and whoever made the file so let's go ahead and import these polygons as closed polylines hit OK let it do its thing zoom extents and you'll see that they still have an elevation of 0 so this is where a lot of people get frustrated I'm going to show you how to import this into your drawing with the correct elevation okay now that I have this file and for purposes of making it easier to see later I'm going to go ahead and find the drawing of the layer that this file came in on and it's right there it came in on that uses the the name of the file and I'm going to assign it a different color yellow will be fine just so you can see it later when I bring it in okay I'm done with this let's save this file I'm going to call this one TC contours Travis County contours okay almost done the last thing we need to do is bring all this data together okay I've got four separate drawings and this these drawings can be used over and over and over again in different locations different drawings and so on so you may not want to get rid of them right away okay so this is going to be my project drawing so I'm going to go ahead and do a save as and I'm going to call this one project Oh zero zero one save okay so the scenario here is I'm going to be working in a totally different coordinate system that that I've been showing you so far so I'm going to assign my coordinate system this one happens to be I'm going to be using tx8 three - CFS which happens to be Texas state Plains central zone US foot this is going to be my working file this is what the the client has asked for in this particular case so I'm going to hit OK so all for my files and actually all five of them including this one are in different coordinate zones I need them all to come together to do so we have to attach and query in each one the first thing I'm going to do is attach a drawing in the map Explorer tab right click on drawings and click on attach okay navigate to the folder make sure you don't save those drawings in your desktop because you can't create a map drive to a desktop but navigate to the folder where you saved them and I'm going to first bring in the US map okay add and hit OK so in essence this works kind of like an xref but you can zoom extents all day long and you won't see anything ok I did a zoom extents I just had my geo marker for my Texas eighty-three central zone central foot marker that it's showing me here nothing really happens until I actually query in the data that I need so let's talk about showing you the query and remember when you define your query there's different ways to do it all I did was right click on current query and clicked on define and it brings up this dialog box I can do it in so many different ways so there's the low station option I usually do this just to test it I'm going to do all and hit okay and I always do a preview first so execute the query okay do a zoom extents and there's the map of my United States now again this is just a preview so when you hover over this the whole thing shows up and I'm going to do a regen and it goes away so well I don't need the whole map of the United States so let's go modify this query select query right click and define okay so now that I know that it's coming in I'm going to go ahead and come back and delete that option so I don't do the whole query I'm going to do a data okay from the object data table so I click on data and I can tell it where I needed to go get the data from well there's the object data from the object data table I like for it to bring in a state equal to as you can see I have different operators here I'm going to use TX now it is case sensitive in this case depending on how the object data was built will depend on how the object data is imported okay I'm going to hit OK and I'm going to do a preview again okay so there is only the state of Texas okay I'm going to take it one step further let's go ahead and define that query I'm going to select this and I'm going to go edit this instead of bringing in the county I'm going to instead of bringing in the state I'm going to bring in the county and this county that I'm going to be bringing in happens to be called Travis County hit OK hit preview and now I filtered it down to the county that I'm going to be working in once I get what I need I not only come back here and do a preview I change that to draw okay and once I draw it it's part of my drawing I can regen all day long but this is part of my drawing now okay now once I get what I need from this shapefile or I don't need to have this attached anymore it's very important that you detach it after you query in the objects you want the reason so is because map 3d uses a safe set type of a option where I can save data back to the original file should I edit this at all I don't want to have that linkage back and forth right now I'm just want to bring this in and work on it okay so now I'm going to go ahead and bring in the dgn data I'm going to go ahead and right click on drawings attached let's go bring in the text the TC dgn file okay again there it is and I'm going to go ahead and query what in it what I need in so define I'm done with this so I can delete that let's do a location let's do all hit OK and always do preview when you're doing this just to make sure that you don't draw it into your drawing it should fall right in the middle of my County outline give or take a few roads that are extending outward and as you can see there it is now let's go one step further let's talk a little bit more about querying here I'm going to go ahead and back to define and I'm going to go ahead and edit this query you know naturally I don't want to be working in the entire county if my job is going to be somewhere in this area I could do a circle or a fence or a polygon or a polyline or a window I'll do a window here anything that crosses the window will be queried in or anything completely inside the window if you understand your selection methods crossing versus selection this is what I'm going to be using here so I'm going to define on a zoom in here and let's just say that my project is in this area right there for whatever reason okay and I'm going to hit okay so now I'm doing a query of just anything that crosses a window let's execute that query and so there's my work area as you can see now I can bring in just less less less data than what's already there only what I need because I don't need the whole county and this keeps my file sizes down so once I see that's what I want I go in and hit the draw button okay now I did forget to show you something here earlier but that's not a problem I'll come back and show you this and little okay so the contour data I forgot to show you that the contour data let's go back to the properties here when you bring up the properties dialog box of the contour data as you can see it's got an elevation of 0 okay but see this section right here this is object data reading off that object data table this particular contour has an elevation of 620 ok so this is how I know that there is elevation data assigned to it this one's got 580 ok so I'm going to be using that object data table to import my contours as as the width elevations I'm done with my dgn file so I'm going to go ahead and detach it ok clear those messages and now let's go ahead and bring in the contour data so attach the contours hit OK and let's go ahead and right click on query current query and define again the first thing I do just to I use this as a check location all hit OK preview and I'm going to hit execute the query give it some time so okay there are my contours coming in right where I need them to be it as well of course I don't need all the contours of this I just need whatever my working area is again it's a preview so if I do a region they're gone okay so now let's go ahead and define I'm going to take that location and edit that let's do another window crossing I'll define it and I'm going to take it just to step out further than what I already have here okay hit OK now if I go ahead and draw right now I'm going to be bringing in those those uh contour lines but they will only have an elevation of zero to it to make sure you bring in the contours with elevations you've got to go to this ultra properties button click on that ultra properties button and you'll be taken to this dialog box here I want to bring in the elevation data and I need to then go select the expression button this expression button says okay you're going to bring in elevation where do you want to get the elevation data from well there's an object data table there this is the object data table that I used that came with the file and in that object data table there's elevation data there with it so I'm going to hit OK and then if I don't hit add nothing happens so that they dad and you can see that is bringing in the elevation from this elevation data table and hit OK ok you'll see that this is not checked on there's data there waiting for me but it's not checked on until I hit draw okay now it's going to use the alter properties that I had already altered in it so I execute that query anything that crossed that box that I drew was brought in and if you look it's got an elevation assigned to it this one happens to be 800 this one happens to be a 20 and so on so now I've got contour data that I can use the last thing I need to do is import that image file so I'm going to detach this clear my messages and let's go ahead and attach the image file and run a query on it now I don't need the crossing window anymore so actually I can clear the query I can uncheck the ultra properties now the problem with image files is I don't have the ability to query in just an area because the whole image is one object so whether I like it or not I have to do all and if I do a preview all I'm going to get in the preview is nothing the query source is not available or empty Oh actually the reason is not available is because I didn't attach my image file sorry about that okay so if I do a query and define it I don't need that anymore I don't need this anymore let's do a location all hit OK and let's do a preview and when I do the preview I get a box showing the outline of where the image will be again I can't limit my image to just this area ok so I'm going to have to use what what it gives me so that's where my image is going to be brought in so let's go back to the query let's go define and then stedy preview I'm going to hit draw and execute that query and now the query works in a draw order fashion so I'm going to select the I mean the image is there since it was the last thing drawn I can now go ahead and send it to the back and you'll see come on you'll see that now I've got the image I've got my contour data I've got my dgn data and I've I'm ready to go ahead and proceed back to civil 3d and do the work that I need it's fairly simple but the like I said the you have to create the four separate drawings bring them into one so that they're it works properly I hope you found this helpful if you have any questions get ahold of me and you all have a good day you

Channel: Applied Software Technology

Views: 160,351

Rating: 4.9174194 out of 5

Keywords: Enceptia, Autocad (Software), Geographic Information System (Industry), Technology, Autodesk Civil 3D, Engineering, Civil Engineering (Industry), Civil Engineer, AutoCAD Civil 3D, Autodesk, Infrastructure (Industry), Infrastructure, BIM, Building Information Modeling, GIS, GIS Data, Autodesk Software

Id: g7HW6apnh3g

Length: 33min 57sec (2037 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2013