This year Autodeskers will have more options to further their careers than in the past. Of course you will be in the best environment to network and learn what is new with the technology, but also get certification.
As an AU attendee, you will have an opportunity to do just that— for FREE! Stand out among your peers with Autodesk Certification, a credential that validates your skills and wins you recognition. Accelerate your professional development, improve productivity, and enhance your professional credibility for free. At a time when the economy and job market is struggling its a great way to differentiate yourself and show more credability to your customers.
GIS and the geospatial sciences have always been associated with the natural environment. Today, however, we are seeing a need to bring sustainable practices to the human environment, specifically cities. Cities are becoming a pinnacle focus for sustainable design for many reasons.
The first is populations are starting relocate to urban areas. In fact the U.N. expects the world's population to expand from its current level of 6.6 billion to 8.3 billion by 2030. By 2030, fully 60% of that 8.3 billion will, by the U.N.'s forecasts, be living in urban areas, compared with only 13% in 1900.
The Second, in a study by McKinsey and Company which determined that investing in the energy efficiency of buildings represents a powerful and strategic energy and climate solution that combined with other non-transportation initiatives could reduce the nation’s energy consumption by 23 percent by 2020, save the U.S. economy $1.2 trillion, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 gigatons annually.
One of the organizations spearheading sustainable practices is the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) which has developed standards to locate and design buildings within the urban environment. The standard is called LEED which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and has specific criteria for identifying acceptable sites to be redeveloped. These criteria range from site selection to floodplain avoidance and are outlined in the following PDF document.
A great example of the analysis that can be done using CAD and GIS information is shown in a recent post by GeoExpressions, a great blog with an engineering GIS theme.
Its called Topobase and its a true 'plug and play' CAD and GIS tool for managing your asset information. The name is a little odd, but when you take it apart (TOPO) and (BASE) it starts to make more sense. Topo - refers to topology and how that enables a user to analyze and perform complex queries. Base - refers to a basemap and how that is often the common data that is used throughout an organization. Topobase is built on AutoCAD Map 3D which I have talked about and shown many examples of how it can be used as a platform to facilitate CAD and GIS integration.
Topobase goes the next step and its primary purpose is to centralize data in a spatial database complete with business rules and tools to perform operations specific to utilities and cities. By centralizing the data Topobase is able to make the data accessabile both in a desktop client but also through a web-based application giving access to the same data from within an office to even the field.
At the core of Topobase is your organizations data which is stored in a specific schema. The schema (which descripes how the data is arranged) has been developed by Autodesk through its over 500 topobase customers worldwide. However, the Topobase schema is very easily modified and its business rules changed to meet the needs of an organization. Topobase can also be integrated with other enterprise systems like a CRM, SAP or ERP technologies.
From a CAD and GIS perspective Topobase fits the definition of a GIS, it is purposed to be an asset management solution for utilities and cities to manage and distribute data while at the same time having a CAD front end. The benefit and differentiator between Topobase and other enterprise asset management solutions is by having a CAD interface you are able to create and design asset data with the precision of CAD tools while also having the analysis and management capabilties of a GIS.
The video below shows using the Topobase solution on the desktop and also in the field.
The American economist and Harvard professor Theodore Levitt once said, "creativity is thinking up new things, innovation is doing new things." Well (FWA) Frederick Ward Associates is currently DOING some new things with the help of Andrew Whaley a civil engineer currently employed there. I had the pleasure of talking to Andrew about his experience using Autodesk Civil 3D in his daily work and how the FDO tools have helped him to save time and money! I had a great time talking to Andrew, here is what he said:
Neal: What does Frederick Ward Associates, INC do?
Andrew: FWA is a Civil Firm that handles the entire spectrum of land development services. We have on staff architects, surveyors, planners and engineers allowing us to be a part of the design process from cradle-to-grave.
Neal: What makes FWA unique?
Andrew: We are helping our customers to build sustainable developments. We currently have 6-7 LEED projects registered and going through the process of being certified.
Neal: Why do think FWA is thriving in this current economy?
Andrew: Our reputation as a firm that produces quality has helped. We continually strive to innovate while exceeding our customers expectations.
Neal: What Autodesk products do you currently use?
Andrew: Currently we use Autodesk Civil 3D 2009 and are evaluating Autodesk Civil 3D 2010.
Neal: What is your background?
Andrew: I have a degree in Civil Engineering from MichiganTech, I was then on active duty with the army after which I started working at FWA three years ago.
Neal: Why do you need to integrate GIS information into your design work?
Andrew: I save time and money integrating GIS information using data that already exists. For example, I might need to use watershed information in my CAD design environment. Using FDO I can bring in GIS data (shapefiles) that available for FREE.
Neal: Where does your data come from?
Andrew: Because we primarily work in Maryland and Delaware the 2 sites I use often are the The Delaware DataMIL and Geospatial data site from the Maryland DNR. I routinely find ESRI shapefiles that I can use for my engineering work.
Neal: How have you integrated your GIS data in the past?
Andrew: Most of the information was being brought into the drawing environment from paper maps and then digitized to create the appropriate dataset. This process could take over 30 minutes to do, using FDO I can go to a website, download a dataset and be using it within AutoCAD Civil 3D in few minutes.
Neal: How long have you been using FDO?
Andrew: I have been using FDO for about a year, just started using it in the 2008 release and in the past 4-5 months I find myself using it every day.
Neal: Where did you learn about FDO?
Andrew: When I was in the army I used GIS and so I knew that this data was readily available. I stumbled onto a webcast by Dana Probert, or Lucy Kuhns that showed how using FDO technology you could integrate GIS data into your AutoCAD Civil 3D enviroment. I also learned that AutoCAD Civil 3D has all the capabilities of AutoCAD Map 3D so anything I learn about that product increases my skill in AutoCAD Civil 3D.
Neal: What are some other topics around CAD and GIS you would like to learn more about?
Andrew: One of the things we are trying to do is to use GIS to keep track of our projects. So what better way to organize your projects and data but to use a GIS map front end. The struggle is how exactly can we do that – how do we take it from the tables within our project and integrate that into a Map and share that across more than our civil and map users, or expose this information to our clients.
I was impressed how Andrew has taken the initiative to learn more about a technology that many civil engineers or even AutoCAD Civil 3D users are unaware of. By using FDO Andrew is saving time and money by leveraging data that is in many cases FREE! Andrew is thinking of great enterprise uses as well, by consolidating information into a single point of access to allow other users to view project data. That gives me all kinds of ideas for more CAD and GIS posts around integration ... Thanks Andrew!!
If you are interested in sharing your experience with FDO, you can contact me at neal.niemiec@autodesk.com or simply leave a comment.
I was recently contacted by an avid reader of my blog who had asked about limiting the amount of data when an AutoCAD Map 3D user opens a drawing with FDO data attached. In my previous post FDO Best Practices (The Spatial Query) I showed how a user can limit the spatial extent of FDO data sources. By using the spatial query it allows the user to work with a subset of the FDO data. However, there is another way that you can limit information and also change the stylization by using scale ranges.
This feature is available from the FDO Style Editor. An AutoCAD Map 3D / Civil 3D user can have as many scale ranges setup for an FDO feature as you want. For example, at a certain scale a user might NOT see an FDO layer called parcels, when the user zooms in to the map the parcel data might then be visible, zoom in again and now the parcels may have a thematic theme applied to them, zoom in once more and now parcel labels appear. The following shows the Style Editor interface where the scale ranges are setup in AutoCAD Map 3D.
Using both the Spatial Query tool and the Scale Ranges its then possible to create your 'template' drawing that has the stored FDO connections to (.SHP, Oracle, MySQL, etc.) data that is managed. This means that no matter how much data and to what spatial extent it is in - you can selectively bring that GIS data into your user environment based on location and scale.
I have put together a video that will help to show this: and yes it is narrated.
Think of data at the scale of a city, county, state, country or even the world. By nature GIS data can be at a scale that most CAD users are not used to. When I talk to CAD users that are new to FDO and using GIS data one of the issues that often arises is bringing volumes of GIS data within their drawing environment at a scale that exceeds their needs.
For example, take an AutoCAD Civil 3D user that is working on a new subdivision. They might only be working in an area that comprises a .5 mile square area, but the soil information they are integrating is for the entire county. How can they reduce the soil data before they add it into their current drawing environment?
The answer is to add the GIS data using the query option, define a bounding area and add the data to your map. The result is that even before you integrate the GIS data FDO will use the boundary to clip the information to the user specified area. I have created a video that shows this workflow - sorry you don't get to hear my James Earl Jones voice narration this week ;)
Terribly sorry, my apologies and a large helping of sympathy from me to you. I realized that this post was long overdue and could certainly help in clarifying CAD and GIS integration techniques. Traditionally, users of GIS or CAD technologies have relied on the ability to translate between formats like .SHP and .DWG to integrate data. Entire companies have been forged on this type of workflow, one need only look at a company called safe software, which has built a business on translating between different spatial data types.
This model has been around for years and still remains a viable means to integrate your GIS information with your design CAD data. The benefits are you will quickly be working with the other data in the format that you area used to and have all the tools that your CAD or GIS platform supplies. However, the downside is you will usually be creating redundant information (multiple copies) of the same data. Perhaps, though the most important issue to avoid is when translating data there is always the possiblity of error or information being lost. When this happens you can simply insert your face into Bill Murray's on the image above and explain to your manager that the data has been 'LOST IN TRANSLATION'.
Then comes Autodesk and does something incredibly selfless from a software vendor perspective. Yes, its true I work for Autodesk, but consider the following. In 2006 Autodesk created a technology called FDO which allows you to integrate GIS data inside your AutoCAD Map 3D environment. Yeah yeah, it sounds like ArcGIS for AutoCAD which can emulate GIS information inside an AutoCAD environment, but FDO allows the user to manipulate the data directly. For example an AutoCAD Map 3D user can connect to .SHP or ArcSDE databases and use the AutoCAD tools to do design work, or do complex spatial analysis with the data. Further, what makes FDO so powerful and the reason I love working for a software company like Autodesk is they made the technology open source.
WHAT!?
That's right, instead of using FDO to lock down your data, or create some proprietary format like other software vendors in the CAD and GIS industry might do - Autodesk made it available for anybody to use, develop and implement in their software.
So I have put together a small video that highlights the difference between the traditional world of data translation - and using an open platform technology like FDO to FREE your data and make CAD and GIS integration a reality. After this post if you're still 'Lost in Translation' look at the following video to see what I am talking about ;)
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